[The beginnings of genetics in Italy (1903-1940). A reconnaissance].

Abstract

The spreading of Mendelism in Italy produced a sort of "Mendelization" of already existing studies and research on the subject of heredity, which received a new impetus. This was the origin of genetics. There followed a "Morganization" process of the field, when the mere formal-genealogical analysis became substituted by laboratory research. The first phase began with the rediscovery of Mendel's laws, and its strong point ever since the beginning was in agrarian research. The second phase began after 1925, following upon the conclusion of a heated pre-war debate on the subject of nuclear cytology. Various Italian scholars raised strong objections against the so-called Sutton-Boveri hypothesis, of which the successive Morgan et al. chromosomal theory of inheritance was initially understood, or misunderstood, to be a specious extension. The resulting controversy is that which most characterized the history of genetics in Italy during the first part of the twentieth century, and conditioned its development.