Erich Tschermak-Seysenegg

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Erich Tschermak (around 1900)

Erich Tschermak , Tschermak Edler von Seysenegg since 1906 (born November 15, 1871 in Vienna , † October 11, 1962 there ), was an Austrian plant breeder , geneticist and botanist . His father was the mineralogist Gustav Tschermak , who was raised to hereditary nobility in 1906, his mother was a daughter of the botanist Eduard Fenzl , his older brother the physiologist Armin Tschermak . Along with Carl Correns and Hugo de Vries, he was long considered to be one of the “rediscoverers” of the Mendelian rules of inheritance in 1900, but this is controversial. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Tscherm.-Seys. ".

Life

Erich Tschermak began studying agriculture in Vienna , which he interrupted to gain practical experience on a farm near Freiberg in Saxony . Then he continued his studies in Halle an der Saale . After completing his studies, he worked in plant breeding at various locations until he found a position as an assistant at the chair for plant production at the Vienna University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in 1902 . In 1906 he became an associate professor there, and from 1909 to 1941 he was a full professor of plant breeding. From 1909 he also held a professorship for botany at the University of Vienna.

Tschermak-Seysenegg's grave

His remains rest in an honorary grave in the Döblinger Friedhof (group MO, number 90) in Vienna.

Act

In 1898 Tschermak began working as a trainee in the research institute in Ghent with crossbreeding experiments with peas. In doing so, he came across the then little-known work of Gregor Mendel , who had also attempted crossbreeding with peas. Due to a pre-publication of the results of these private experiments at about the same time as the work of Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns in 1900, he was recognized as the third “rediscoverer” who had been enlightened by Mendel in the 1860s, but so far not in theirs Mendelian rules of inheritance recognized importance . However, Curt Stern showed in 1966 that Tschermak apparently did not understand Mendel's basic results at the time, and argued that he could therefore not be considered a rediscoverer. Other authors, including Ernst Mayr , agreed with this assessment . It was pointed out in particular that Tschermak did not understand Mendel's concept of dominance or his argumentation on the expected values ​​for backcrosses .

An investigation into the correspondence of the Tschermak brothers published in 2011 also showed that his brother Armin, professor of physiology, had a major influence on Erich's rediscovery of Mendel.

Tschermak was one of the first to consistently apply Mendel's rules to plant breeding, and he bred many agriculturally and horticultural important hybrids of cereals, primroses and other plants. He discovered that in some cases, genes only phenotypically be effective if through them crossing with other come together complementary genes ( cryptomeria ). According to current understanding, this can be based on the fact that the complementary genes code for different subunits of an enzyme or for different, complementary enzymes.

Fonts

  • About artificial crossing in Pisum sativum (1900)
  • The theory of cryptomery and cryptohybridism (1904)

Awards and memberships

Web links

Commons : Erich Tschermak  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Encyclopædia Britannica : Erich Tschermak von Seysenegg .
  2. ↑ DNA from the Beginning : Erich von Tschermak . DNA Learning Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory .
  3. ↑ a b Ilse Jahn : Tschermak-Seysenegg, Erich von. In: History of Biology. 3rd edition 1998, special edition Nikol, Hamburg 2004, p. 976.
  4. ↑ Manfried Welan (Ed.): The University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. From the foundation to the future 1872–1997. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 1997, ISBN 3-205-98610-5 , pp. 254f.
  5. ^ Curt Stern, E. Sherwood: The origins of genetics. A Mendel Source Book, San Francisco: Freeman, 1966. For this reason, the authors did not include it in the source volume.
  6. ^ Ernst Mayr : The Growth of Biological Thought , Belknap Press, p. 730 (1982)
  7. ↑ Randy Moore: The "Rediscovery" of Mendel's work. In: Bioscene. Volume 27, No. 2, 2001, pp. 13-24, here p. 16 f. ( PDF ( Memento of February 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ))
  8. ^ Floyd Monaghan, Alain Corcos: Tschermak: a non-discoverer of Mendelism. I. An historical note. In: Journal of Heredity. Volume 77, 1986, p. 468 f., Doi: 10.1093 / oxfordjournals.jhered.a110284
    Floyd Monaghan, Alain Corcos: Tschermak: a non-discoverer of Mendelism. II. A critique. In: Journal of Heredity. Volume 78, 1987, pp. 208-210, doi: 10.1093 / oxfordjournals.jhered.a110361
  9. ↑ Michal Simunek, Uwe Hoßfeld, Florian Thümmler, Olaf Breidbach (eds.): The Mendelian Dioskuri: Correspondence of Armin with Erich von Tschermak-Seysenegg, 1898–1951. Studies in the History of Sciences and Humanities 27. Prague: Institute of Contemporary History of the Academy of Sciences, Prague, Department of Genetics / 'Mendelianum' of the Moravian Museum, Brno, 2011
  10. ↑ a b Lexicon of Biology : Tschermak, Erich . Spectrum, Heidelberg 1999.
  11. ↑ Lexicon of Biology: Cryptomery . Spectrum, Heidelberg 1999.
  12. ↑ Lexicon of Biology: Complementary Genes . Spectrum, Heidelberg 1999.
  13. ↑ Member entry of Erich Tschermak von Seysenegg at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 18, 2016.
  14. ^ List of former members since 1666: Letter T. Académie des sciences, accessed on March 8, 2020 (French).
  15. ↑ 120 years of Gregor Mendel House 1896–2016, ed. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (Boku), Vienna 2016, p. 15.
personal data
SURNAME Tschermak-Seysenegg, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tschermak, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian botanist, plant breeder and geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1962
Place of death Vienna