Genetic Prehistory in Selective Breeding: A Prelude to Mendel - Rilegato

Wood, Roger; Orel, Vitezslav

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0198505841 ISBN 13: 9780198505846

Casa editrice: OUP Oxford, 2001

Riassunto

Before Mendel, who came closest to the truth about heredity? This book examines the activities of sheep breeders able to transform the appearance and qualities of their stock by combining different traits of body or wool into new patterns. Exploiting what were then untried procedures - individual trait selection, very close inbreeding and progeny testing - they demonstrated inheritance from both sexes and showed how it could be stabilised. Major advances in breeding are associated with the English farmer Robert Bakewell (1725-1795). By the following century, when the same procedures had been established at breeding centres in central Europe, theory as well as practice became the subject of wider attention. In the Brno Sheep Breeders' Society, discussions of patterns of heredity finally gave way to the physiological question, 'What is inherited and how?' The question was posed by Cyrill Napp, abbot of the monastery to which Mendel was admitted six years later.

Su questo libro

Recensione

This is a very valuable book analysing the period of animal breeding, especially sheep, before the discovering of heredity laws by Gregor Mendel. (Folia Mendeliana)

Historians of technology will find here a rich case study of the diffusion of a technology, and the book's implications for the relations of science and technology are significant. (British Journal for the History of Science)

In illuminating the milieu in which Mendel worked, Wood and Orel add usefully to our knowledge of nineteenth-century conceptions of heredity. (British Journal for the History of Science)

Over the last 30 years Orel and Wood have reconstructured the context of Mendel's work more thoroughly than anyone else. This book is a welcome culmination of that project, integrating the various strands of their work into one long argument. (British Journal for the History of Science)

Wood and Orel's book offers answers both intriguing and persuasive. (British Journal for the History of Science)

Historians of genetics will find Wood and Orel's case compelling. (Journal of the History of Biology)

... an interesting and a stimulating study. They have undertaken an impressive amount of research in the archives on sheep-breeding in Europe in the eighteenth and ninteenth centuries, and presented their findings and conclusions clearly and logically. I learnt a lot from the book. (Nature)

Contenuti

• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1: The elusive law
• 2: The fleeces of Spain
• 3: Sheep breeding sets new standards
• 4: Bakewell's new system
• 5: Bakewell becomes a celebrity
• 6: Merinos in Sweden, France and Great Britain
• 7: Merinos in German-speaking countries and Australia
• 8: Ferdinand Geisslern, the Moravian Bakewell
• 9: From breeding principles to genetic laws
• 10: The sheep breeders' legacy to Mendel
• Overview
• References
• Index

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: OUP Oxford
• Data di pubblicazione: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0198505841
• ISBN 13: 9780198505846
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 342