From Wikipedia,
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Carl Erich Correns (September
10,
1864, in
Munich -
February 14,
1933) was a
German
botanist and
geneticist, who is notable
primarily for his independent
discovery of the principles of
heredity, and for his
rediscovery of
Gregor Mendel's earlier paper
on that subject, which he achieved
simultaneously but independent of
the biologists
Erich Tschermak von Seysenegg
and
Hugo de Vries.
Education
Correns studied botany at the
University of
Munich in
1885 and was encouraged while
there by
Carl Nageli, a botanist who
Mendel corresponded with on the
subject of his pea plant
experiments. After completing his
thesis, Correns became a tutor at
the
University of Tubringen and in
1913 he became the first director
of the newly founded
Kaiser Wilhelm Institut fur
Biologie in Berlin-Dahlem.
Key experiments and findings
In
1892, while at the University
of Tubringen, Correns began to
experiment with trait inheritance
in plants. He focused mainly on
the
hawkweed plant experiments
that Mendel carried out, not being
aware of the pea plant results.
Correns published his first paper
on
January 25th,
1900, which cited both
Charles Darwin and Mendel,
though without fully recognising
the relevance of
genetics to Darwin's ideas. In
Correns' paper, "G.Mendel's Law
Concerning the Behavior of the
Progeny of Racial Hybrids", he
restated Mendel's results and his
law of segregation and law of
independent assortment. He
undertook experiments with the
four o'clock plant (Mirabilis
jalapa) to investigate non-Mendelian
inheritance in variegated plants.
In 1909 he established this as the
first conclusive example of
extrachromosomal inheritance.
Most of Correns' work went
unpublished, and was destroyed in
the Berlin bombings of
1945.
