Carl Correns

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Carl Correns, before 1911

Carl Erich Franz Joseph Correns (born September 19, 1864 in Munich , † February 14, 1933 in Berlin ) was a German botanist and geneticist . He was one of the rediscoverers of Mendel's rules of inheritance in 1900 and described gene coupling for the first time in the same year . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Correns ".

Live and act

Carl Erich Correns came from a Rhenish legal family. His father Erich Correns was a painter , and his mother Emilie was also a painter. Both parents died quite soon (1877 and 1881), so that Carl became an orphan while still at school. From 1882 to 1885 he attended the humanistic department of the canton school in St. Gallen in Switzerland.

Correns began studying at the University of Munich in 1885 . He studied botany , chemistry and physics at the universities of Munich and Graz and was founded in 1889 in Hamburg with Carl Nägeli with a thesis on the thick growth of algae - cell walls to the Dr. phil. PhD. He then worked as an assistant to Gottlieb Haberlandt at the Botanical Institute of the University of Graz, to Simon Schwendener at the University of Berlin and to Wilhelm Pfeffer at the University of Leipzig .

In 1892 he married Elisabeth Widmer, the daughter of a silk manufacturer and niece of his doctoral supervisor, Nägeli. He had three children with her, including the mineralogist Carl Wilhelm Correns (1893–1980) and the chemist and politician Erich Correns (1896–1981).

Carl Correns

In 1892 Correns became a private lecturer in botany at the University of Tübingen , and in 1894 he began hybridizing plants in the local botanical garden, which - parallel to the corresponding work by Hugo de Vries and Erich Tschermak - led to the rediscovery of Mendel's rules. The corresponding publication of Correns took place like that of the other two in 1900. The term "Mendelian Rules " was coined by Correns, who wanted to emphasize with this formulation that it is not about strict laws, but about rules, from which there are exceptions . An exception described by Correns himself as early as 1900 is that not all features can be freely combined with one another, but some are coupled with one another, i.e. H. are inherited together ( gene coupling ). Another exception that Correns looked at is cytoplasmic, or extrachromosomal, inheritance . The violation of Mendel's rules occurs here because the cytoplasm with the mitochondria and plastids, in contrast to the chromosomes, is completely inherited only in the female sex ( egg cell ). Correns also investigated the sexing of plants and was the first to prove in 1907 that sex is inherited according to Mendel's rules.

The Correns experimental protocols were examined by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger . Rheinberger was able to refute Correns' statement that he only found out about Mendel's experiments after his own rediscovery (Correns spoke of a lightning-fast realization on a sleepless night in 1899). He found an excerpt from Mendel's essay in Correns' estate, which was from 1896. However, Rheinberger does not believe in plagiarism, since Correns originally pursued completely different goals with his experiments than to investigate the heritability of traits.

Honorary grave in the Dahlem forest cemetery

In 1902 Correns was appointed associate professor at the University of Leipzig, then in 1909 as a full professor at the University of Münster , where he also headed the Botanical Garden . From 1914 Correns was the first director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology in Berlin-Dahlem . He was also an honorary professor at the University of Berlin. Between 1922 and 1927 Correns was a member of the Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society .

In 1925 Correns was elected a member of the Leopoldina Scholars' Academy , and in 1932 the Privy Councilor was awarded the Darwin Medal by the British Royal Society . In the same year he received the Harnack Medal of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society . as well as the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art . From 1924 he was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . Correns died on February 14, 1933 in Berlin.

Correns was buried in the Dahlem Forest Cemetery in Berlin-Dahlem . His grave was one of the honor graves of the city of Berlin from 1952 to 2014 . In his honor, a triangular park in Berlin-Dahlem in the vicinity of several Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes was named Corrensplatz. In Cologne , Münster and Tübingen streets were named after him.

Fonts

  • Investigations into the propagation of the moss by breeding organs and cuttings , Gustav Fischer, Jena 1899.
  • G. Mendel's rule on the behavior of the offspring of racial bastards . In: Reports of the German Botanical Society, 18, Gebrüder Borntraeger , Berlin 1900, pp. 158–168 ( archive )
  • About Levkojenbastarde - To the knowledge of the limits of the Mendelian rules. In: Botany Central Journal , 84, brothers Gotthelft, Cassel 1900, pp 97-113 (initial characterization of genetic linkage ) ( Archive )
  • Experimental investigations into the origin of the species in the botanical field . In: Archive for Race and Society Biology , 1, Archive Society, Berlin 1904, pp. 27–52 ( Archives )
  • The determination and inheritance of sex, after experiments with higher plants In: Negotiations of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors, 79th Assembly in Dresden 1907, Part Two, FCW Vogel, Leipzig 1908, pp. 229-231 ( archive )
  • Inheritance attempts with pale (yellow) green and variegated leaved clans in Mirabilis Jalapa, Urtica pilulifera and Lunaria annua. In: Journal for Inductive Descent and Heredity, Volume 1, Issue 4, Gebrüder Borntraeger, Berlin 1909, pp. 291–328 ( archive )
  • Knowledge of the role of nucleus and plasma in inheritance , Journal of Inductive Descent and Inheritance Theory, Volume 2, Issue 4, Gebrüder Borntraeger, Berlin 1909, pp. 331-340 ( archive )
  • with Alfred Fischel , Ernst Küster and Wilhelm Roux : Terminology of the Development Mechanics of Animals and Plants . Wilhelm Engelmann , Leipzig 1912 ( archive )
  • Collected treatises on genetics from periodicals 1899-1924 , Julius Springer Berlin 1924

literature

Web links

Commons : Carl Correns  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Single references

  1. ↑ a b German biography , accessed on March 14, 2014
  2. ^ Correns, Mendel's rule on the behavior of the offspring of racial bastards, reports of the German Botanical Society, Volume 18, 1900, pp. 156–168. An English translation appeared in Stern, Sherwood, The Origin of Genetics, Freeman 1966
  3. ^ Controversy over Mendel's manuscript , Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 2010
  4. ↑ H.-J. Rheinberger: Carl Correns' Experiments with Pisum, 1896-1899. In FL Holmes, J. Renn, H.-J. Rheinberger (Ed.) Reworking the bench. Research notebooks in the history of science, Kluwer 2003, pp. 221-252
  5. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945 . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-88479-932-0 (= Würzburg medical-historical research. Supplement 3.) - At the same time: Dissertation Würzburg 1995), p. 146.
  6. ↑ Awards of the Darwin Medal 1890 to 1948 (Engl.)
  7. ↑ Awards of the Harnack Medal
  8. ^ Member entry of Carl Correns at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on January 19, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Correns, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Correns, Carl Erich Franz Joseph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biologist and one of the rediscoverers of the Mendelian rules
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1933
Place of death Berlin