The History of the Gene

The history of the concept of the gene is often associated with that of genetics, the “science of heredity”, which began in 1900 with the rediscovery of Mendel's laws. This chapter identifies what preceded the term “gene”, which was coined by Wilhelm Johannsen in 1909, in the context of the field of genetics and in the period after the rediscovery of Mendel's laws in 1900 by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak. Johannsen interpreted his genotype conception of heredity as an “ahistorical” conception of the reactions of living beings. The chapter examines the main eras in the gene's conceptual history: its place in Mendelian genetics at the beginning of the 20th century, population genetics between 1930 and 1940, molecular biology from the 1970s until the 2000s, and, lastly, in what is often referred to as “the post-genomic era”.