Author: Alain Corcos, Floyd Monaghan
Subject: History of Science
Paper ISBN 0-8135-1921-7
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-1920-9
Pages: 200 pp.
Series: Masterworks of Discovery series

Gregor Mendel's Experiments on Plant Hybrids is the subject of this first volume in a new series, "Masterworks of Discovery: Guided Studies to Great Texts in Science." This series is aimed at making the great works of scientific discovery accessible to students and lay readers. In each volume, distinguished historians of science provide carefully selected original texts (or extracts) and accompany them with interpretive commentary, explanatory notes, and bio-bibliographical material.

As the series editor, Harvey Flaumenhaft, explains in his introduction: "To be thoughtful human beings--to be thoughtful about what makes us human--we need to read the record of the thinking that has shaped the world around us, and still shapes our minds as well. The volumes in this series are not books about thinkers and their thoughts. They are neither histories nor synopses that can take the place of the original works. The volumes are intended to provide guidance that will help nonspecialists to read for themselves the thinker's own expressions of their thoughts." These books will allow all readers to take an active part in the excitement of scientific discovery.

After its rediscovery in 1900, Mendel's paper Experiments on Plant Hybrids came to be seen as the foundation of genetics. In this classic paper, Gregor Mendel described his painstaking, pioneering experiments with different hybrids of peas in the garden of the Augustinian monastery in Brünn. His experiments led, in time, to the discovery of the first laws of inheritance. Alain Corcos and Floyd Monaghan bring to their commentary more than a decade of collaborative study of Mendel's paper. In writing their interpretive text, they also draw upon their many years of teaching science to nonscientists. They include, by way of introduction, an engaging sketch of Mendel's life as monk and scientist.

Alain Corcos, who received his Ph.D. in plant breeding, is professor emeritus of botany at Michigan State University. Floyd Monaghan, whose training is in chemistry, is professor emeritus of natural science, also at Michigan State University. This volume was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.