The One with Mendel and his Peas

Around the same time as Miescher was tinkering with DNA in Tubingen castle, a middle aged friar-scientist Gregor Mendel was experimenting with inheritance of pea plants. He was the first to define a set of mathematical rules behind inheritance that birthed the field of genetics - a field that lay dormant for a few decades before exploding in the 1900s, and continues to develop to this day. Genetics gives us the tools to reshape the living world with intention and at speed. 

References:

1. Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden. Zwei Abhandlungen. (1865 und 1869.) Von Gregor Mendel. Herausgegeben von Erich Tschermak [Experiments in Plant Hybridization. Two Treatments. (1865 and 1869). By Gregor Mendel. Published by Erich Tschermak. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hs118q&seq=7

2. Gregor Mendel and his Precusors. Conway Zirkle. 1951. https://www.jstor.org/stable/226964?seq=1

3.  Bateson W. (1906) "The progress of genetic research" Report of the Third International Conference 1906 on Genetics, W. Wilks, ed. London, England: Royal Horticultural Society. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/206746#page/129/mode/1up 

4. Fairbanks, D.J. Demystifying the mythical Mendel: a biographical review. Heredity 129, 4–11 (2022). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-022-00526-0