Darwin & Mendel: The ‘Origin’ (Of Species)!
Although Charles Robert Darwin (February 12, 1809 – April 19, 1882) belonged to an elite, wealthy and highly educated family, his father reportedly used to strictly monitor him during his childhood. Once, the English naturalist, geologist, biologist and founding father of Evolutionary Biology failed to perform well in examinations held at his school. It was then his father had written to Darwin: “You care for nothing, but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.“
Later, Darwin took admission at the University of Edinburgh to study Medical Science. At that period of time, anaesthesia was not invented. As he was so traumatised after experiencing bleeding and pain of a patient who underwent an operation, Darwin left the university. Then, he decided to study Law at a law college. A couple of months later, Darwin realised that law was not an ideal subject for him. Finally, he managed to earn a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Divinity from Cambridge University in 1831. After completing his study, Darwin decided to become a priest.
Darwin’s life took a different turn when the captain of HMS Beagle agreed to take him on a long voyage. The only condition was Darwin would have to accompany the captain over the dinner table. As Darwin left England for a five-year-long voyage, his manuscripts were kept in a box untouched. He had an idea that his theory would never be accepted by the church, his wife and members of society.
Perhaps the manuscripts would have been kept inside the box, had Alfred Russel Wallace (January 8, 1823 – November 7, 1913) not written to Darwin on the subject of Natural Selection. The English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator’s letter prompted Darwin to publish his ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life‘ in 1859. In this publication, Darwin presented irrefutable facts and arguments in favour of natural selection and evolution. Paying due respect to Darwin’s contribution to the history of Human Evolution, Wallace, himself, called the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection ‘Darwinism‘.
After writing On the Origin of Species, Darwin visited a publisher who advised the former to write on pigeons, as everyone loves the bird! Finally, a publisher agreed to print 1,250 copies of the book. And, all the copies were sold on the very first day. Since then, this publication has not been out of print for a single time. Darwin, one of the greatest thinkers of all time, explained the basic concepts of the Theory of Evolution in this book. However, he could not complete the theory in his lifetime!
German-Czech biologist, meteorologist and mathematician Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20, 1822 – January 6, 1884) was near-contemporary of Darwin. Mendel, having Degrees in Mathematics and Physics, was a priest at a monastery in a small town of the modern-day Czech Republic. Crops were grown on the monastery land and sold to the market at that period of time. The management of the monastery reportedly urged Mendel to grow high-yielding peas for the benefit of the church. Mendel hybridised thousands of peas plants with different traits in the monastery garden, and carefully stored the data. Long before the concept of gene came into existence, Mendel realised that the union of male and female gametes during sexual reproduction produces a new organism, whose cells contain characteristics of both the mother and the father – either in dominant or in recessive form.
Mendel published his 1866 research paper, titled Experiments on Plant Hybrids, in a little magazine for farmers, and sent a copy of that magazine to Darwin. Most probably, Darwin did not have time to go through the paper penned by Mendel. Mendel received no recognition during his lifetime. Hugo Marie de Vries (February 16, 1848 – May 21, 1935), a Dutch botanist and one of the first geneticists, did not give credit to Mendel in his paper on the results of hybridization experiments published in 1900. It could have been termed plagiarism. In fact, there is no less competition among scientists and scholars. One can go through the biography of Sir Isaac Newton (December 25, 1642 – March 20, 1726-7) to understand the fact that a wise and talented person is not necessarily a good human being. Once, scientist Carl Correns stated that it was a strange coincidence that de Vries included Mendel’s terminologies in his paper. Then, de Vries made an immediate attempt to correct his mistake and to recognise Mendel, stressing that Darwin and Mendel were the two pillars of biology.
There is also an amazing similarity (coincidence!) between both Darwin and Mendel as far as preparing data on scientific research is concerned. Had Darwin not been invited to be a fellow passenger on the HMS Beagle by Captain Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy (July 5, 1805 – April 30, 1865) and had Wallace not sent him the letter on natural selection, the English naturalist would not have published his notes. And, what if Mendel had not been asked by the management of the monastery to grow high-yielding peas?
Darwin received partial recognition for his work during his lifetime, as he was buried next to Newton. However, he never received knighthood. German botanist and mycologist Karl Adolf Wilhelm (1848-1933) reportedly asked Mendel to carry out a study on Hawkweed (or Hieracium). Mendel painfully realised that barring a few, no one had even read his research papers. It has been seen that science never stops. Even non-science and pseudo-science cannot stop scientific progress. Scientists do their job even in difficult times and without any recognition.
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