In the early years of Mendelism, 1900-1910 Bateson established a productive research group consisting of women and men studying biology at Cambridge. The empirical evidence they provided through investigating the patterns of hereditary in many different species helped confirm the validity of the Mendelian laws of heredity. What has not previously been well recognized is that owing to the lack of sufficient institutional support, the group primarily relied on domestic resources to carry out their work. Members of the group formed a kind of extended family unit, centered on the Batesons' home in Grantchester and the grounds of Newnham College. This case illustrates the continuing role that domestic environments played in supporting scientific research in the early 20th century.
William Bateson was one of the pivotal figures in the early history of genetics, having championed the promise of Mendelism to unravel the secrets of heredity. Many refer to the "school" of genetics he directed at Cambridge between 1900 and 1910, but few note that Bateson's group consisted primarily of women. Bateson turned to botanists, zoologists, and physiologists associated with Newnham College, Cambridge, for critical assistance in advancing his research program at a time when Mendelism was not yet recognized as a legitimate field of study. Cambridge women carried out a series of breeding experiments in a number of plant and animal species between 1902 and 1910, the results of which provided crucial evidence that both supported and extended Mendel's laws of heredity. This essay shows how the situation of women in science in the early twentieth century was a factor--along with scientific, institutional, social, and political developments--in establishing the new discipline of genetics.
In 1902, when the new German journal for protozoology, the Archiv fiir Protistenkunde, published its first issue, Richard Hertwig was chosen to write the lead article, which he entitled "Protozoa and the Cell Theory." 1 Both the author and the subject were appropriate and significant choices, for Hertwig, as professor of zoology and comparative anatomy and director of the Munich Zoological Institute, was the founder of one of the leading centers for protozoological research in Germany. His credentials in the field of cell theory were no less impressive. In the 1880s, he and his brother Oscar (both former students of Ernst Haeckel at Jena) had carried out cytological studies of invertebrates that figured prominently in the development of embryology and cell theory. 2 Infused with a love of protozoa through his association with Max Schultze at Bonn, Hertwig had subsequently turned his attention to investigating the processes of fertilization and nuclear division in various groups of protozoa. He was therefore well qualified to discuss the current status of protozoa vis-a-vis cell theory and, on the basis of this evaluation, to suggest a future research program for protozoology.Hertwig's article proved to be an important one for the 1. Richard Hertwig, "Die Protozoen und die Zelltheorie," Arch. Protist., 1 (1902), 1--40.2. For the careers of the Hertwig brothers, see Richard Weissenberg, Oscar Hertwig (1849--1922): Leben und Werk eines deutschen Biologen (Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1959). The articles by several of Richard Hertwig's students (written on the event of his seventieth birthday) in Naturwissenschafien, 8 (1920), 767--782,
Muriel Whedale, a distinguished graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge, was a member of William Bateson's school of genetics at Cambridge University from 1903. Her investigation of flower color inheritance in snapdragons (Antirrhinum), a topic of particular interest to botanists, contributed to establishing Mendelism as a powerful new tool in studying heredity. Her understanding of the genetics of pigment formation led her to do cutting-edge work in biochemistry, culminating in the publication of her landmark work, The Anthocyanin Pigments of Plants (1916). In 1915, she joined Frederick Gowland Hopkin's Department of Biochemistry as assistant and in 1926 became one of the first women to be appointed university lecturer. In 1919 she married the biochemist Huia Onslow, with whom she collaborated until his death in 1922. This paper examines Whedale's work in genetics and especially focuses on the early linkage of Mendelian methodology with new techniques in biochemistry that eventually led to the founding of biochemical genetics. It highlights significant issues in the early history of women in genetics, including the critical role of mentors, funding opportunities, and career strategies.
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