Three papers of 1900: de Vries, Correns and Tschermak bring back Mendel's laws

1900 Life and health theory

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Three papers that independently printed 3:1 ratios among the offspring of hybrids and called them Mendel's rule. From that moment the paper of 1866 was read not as a work on hybrids but as a law of heredity.

The papers appeared in the spring of 1900 one after another from three botanists: the Dutchman Hugo de Vries in Paris and Berlin, the German Carl Correns in Tübingen, and the Austrian Erich Tschermak in Vienna. By the traditional account the Englishman William Bateson was already expounding Mendel in London on 8 May 1900; Olby (1987) reassesses that dating, which rests on the printed text marked 'Read 8 May, 1900' and on Beatrice Bateson's recollection a quarter of a century later. The word 'rediscovery' itself is contested: according to Olby, neither de Vries nor Tschermak reached Mendel's theory independently, de Vries reorganised his data only after reading Mendel, and Correns had read the paper as early as 1896.

Mendel as 'founder' was convenient also because his priority was undisputed and he neutralised any quarrel over precedence among the three living claimants.

Why this date

The date follows the publications of 1900. De Vries: 'Sur la loi de disjonction des hybrides', Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences 130, 845-847 (in French, with no mention of Mendel) and 'Das Spaltungsgesetz der Bastarde', Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft 18, 83-90; Correns: 'G. Mendel's Regel über das Verhalten der Nachkommenschaft der Rassenbastarde', ibid. 18 (4), 158-168; Tschermak: 'Über künstliche Kreuzung bei Pisum sativum', ibid. 18 (6), 232-239. De Vries's references were checked against Olby's bibliography (BJHS 1987), those of Correns and Tschermak against the bibliographies in the German Wikipedia; the Berichte issues themselves were not opened. The key question of the node, why the 1866 paper went unnoticed for 34 years, is treated by historians not as 'lost in a provincial journal'. Mendel sent an offprint to Nägeli on 31 December 1866 with a detailed letter (Fairbanks 2022); the offprints he sent were cut and carry typesetter errors corrected in his hand, so the legend of uncut offprints in Darwin's library is not borne out. The paper was cited before 1900: by Hoffmann (1869) and Focke (1881), both books owned by Darwin; Olby and Gautrey (1968) counted eleven references before 1900, and Weiling found more; the volume of the Verhandlungen was on the shelves of Cambridge University Library by 1880 (Olby 1987, note 14). Olby's explanation: in its day Mendel's work was known but read as a contribution to the normal science of the time, to the evidence for the strength of reversion in hybrids, and only in a different context, three decades later, was it recognised as a discovery. Fisher (1936) put it more briefly: each generation found in Mendel's paper only what it expected to find. Wilkie (BJHS 1962) split the question in three: why it was little noticed, what determined its rediscovery, and what favoured the rapid growth of Mendelism.

What it grew from

• 'Versuche über Pflanzen-Hybriden': segregation of characters and numerical ratios

  prerequisite for · Confidence: high

  The papers of 1900 exist as a 'rediscovery' only in relation to the paper of 1866: they name the rule after Mendel and give the location of his paper, and according to Olby neither de Vries nor Tschermak reached the theory independently, while de Vries reorganised his data around Mendel only after reading him.

  Dispute: The dispute is over the very word 'rediscovery'. The traditional version (Fisher 1936, 'Has Mendel's work been rediscovered?', and Tschermak's own recollections in the Journal of Heredity, 1951) treats the three discoveries as independent. The revision: Meijer (1985) and Corcos and Monaghan (1985) showed that de Vries began writing 3:1 only after 1900; Monaghan and Corcos (1986-1987) deny Tschermak the title of rediscoverer altogether, 'he did not understand Mendel when he had read it'; Rheinberger (Isis 1995) established that Correns had read Mendel in 1896. Olby (1997) sums up: 'The label rediscoverer is a slippery one', and adds that Mendel as founder was convenient because he removed any quarrel over precedence among the three living men. Brannigan (1981), whom Olby summarises, goes further: the status of discovery is attributed by society after the fact; in 1866 the work was a contribution to the normal science of hybrid reversion and became a 'discovery' only in the context of 1900. This also answers the question of the 34 silent years: the paper was read and cited (Hoffmann 1869, Focke 1881, eleven references according to Olby and Gautrey 1968), but read as a paper on hybrids, not on heredity.

  Link sources

  • Robert Olby, William Bateson's Introduction of Mendelism to England: A Reassessment, The British Journal for the History of Science 20 (4), 399-420 (extract) (1987) Verified 20 Sep 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

    The recognition of Gregor Mendel's achievement in his study of hybridization was signalled by the 'rediscovery' papers of Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns and Erich Tschermak. ... The rest, led by De Vries' Berichte paper, were in German and mentioned Mendel, giving the location of his paper.

  • Robert C. Olby, Mendel, Mendelism and Genetics, MendelWeb (1997) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    We now possess evidence that neither Hugo de Vries nor Erich Tschermak arrived independently of Mendel at his theory, although Tschermak did perceive the 3:1 ratio in his F2 data in 1900. Not till De Vries had read Mendel (possibly for the second time) did he reorganize his data and from them select those experiments which confirmed Mendel.

  • Alain Corcos, Floyd Monaghan, Role of de Vries in the recovery of Mendel's work: 1. Was de Vries really an independent discoverer of Mendel?, Journal of Heredity 76 (3), 187-190 (abstract) (1985)

    Arguments are based on de Vries' own writings that showed the F2 data of his numerous crosses are reported as 3:1 ratios only after 1900. They also show that his theory of inheritance becomes quasi Mendelian only after 1900.

  • Daniel J. Fairbanks, Demystifying the mythical Mendel: a biographical review, Heredity 129 (1), 4-11 (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    No one, including Mendel, recognised the importance of his theory in his day; it languished mostly unnoticed until its dramatic rediscovery founded the science of genetics at the beginning of the twentieth century.

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What grew out of it

• Bateson gives the science of heredity a name: 'genetics'

  prerequisite for · Confidence: high

  It was the publications of 1900 that brought Mendel to Bateson and gave him the independent evidence he was seeking: in that same year 1900 he was expounding Mendel before the Royal Horticultural Society (the traditional date of 8 May is questioned by Olby), and the name 'genetics' of 1905-1906 was given to the science 'born of Mendel's work' after its rediscovery.

  Dispute: Davis (PLoS Genetics 2022) is not a historian by profession and her text contains factual slips (de Vries is called Austrian, Tschermak's name is misspelt), so her quotation is taken as support for Olby rather than as an independent basis. As to through whom exactly Bateson learnt of Mendel, de Vries or Correns, Olby (1987) argues against Beatrice Bateson's family version.

  Link sources

  • Robert Olby, William Bateson's Introduction of Mendelism to England: A Reassessment, BJHS 20 (4), 399-420 (extract) (1987) Verified 20 Sep 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

    The recognition of Gregor Mendel's achievement in his study of hybridization was signalled by the 'rediscovery' papers of Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns and Erich Tschermak. ... It has long been accepted that the first account of Mendel's work in English was given by the Cambridge zoologist, William Bateson, to an audience of Fellows of the Royal Horticultural Society in London on 8 May, 1900.

  • Lea K. Davis, Weldon, Bateson, and the origins of genetics: Reflections on the unraveling and rebuilding of a scientific community, PLoS Genetics 18 (10), e1010379 (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    The year 1900 marked the "rediscovery" of Mendel's laws by De Vries, Correns, and Tschemark, and gave Bateson the independent evidence that he was seeking (Box 3). He became a huge supporter of the "mendelian" theory

  • Robert C. Olby, Mendel, Mendelism and Genetics, MendelWeb (1997) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    The name itself was first publicized in 1906, twenty-two years after Mendel's death. The occasion was the third international conference on plant hybridization, the first to carry the name genetics in an alternative title. The speaker was William Bateson, and his theme was the need to establish this new discipline.

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• The biometric-Mendelian debate: continuous or discontinuous heredity

  influenced · Confidence: high

  The quarrel between Weldon and Bateson over continuous and discontinuous variation had run since 1894, but it was Mendel's laws, rediscovered in 1900, that became its object: by 1902 the two schools had taken shape as 'Mendelians' and 'biometricians', and Weldon printed in Biometrika his critique of Mendel's laws.

  Dispute: The link is drawn as "influenced" and not as a prerequisite because the quarrel is older than the rediscovery: Froggatt and Nevin date the 'Mendelian-ancestrian' controversy to 1889-1906, and Davis counts the break between Weldon and Bateson from the review of 1894. Mendelism gave the sides their object but did not create the conflict itself. The explanation of the conflict is also contested: Provine (1971) through personalities and arguments, Mackenzie and Barnes (1975) through social interests, Olby (1989) finds the sociological version insufficient for the Weldon and Bateson pair.

  Link sources

  • Lea K. Davis, Weldon, Bateson, and the origins of genetics, PLoS Genetics 18 (10), e1010379 (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

    The next plot point in the story occurred at the turn of the century when Mendel's work was "rediscovered." ... But Pearson and Weldon were skeptical of mendelian ratios believing the results were "too good to be true." ... By 1902, the two schools of thought were cemented and colloquially named, the Mendelians (Bateson, Saunders, and Punnett) in Cambridge, and the Biometricians (Weldon and Pearson) in London.

  • A. W. F. Edwards, Robert Heath Lock and His Textbook of Genetics, 1906, Genetics 194 (3), 529-537 (2013) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Bateson's Mendel's Principles of Heredity of 1902, unlike its namesake of 1909, was no textbook, but principally "A Defense of Mendel's Principles of Heredity" against the criticism of W. F. R. Weldon, a prominent member of K. Pearson's group of biometricians who were opposed to Bateson's Mendelian line of thought.

  • Robert C. Olby, Mendel, Mendelism and Genetics, MendelWeb (1997) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    In 1900 it could receive such a status because it could be fitted into the new perspective of the discontinuity of variation, which Bateson and de Vries recognized as nature's mechanism for preventing the dilution and loss (by crossing) of the variability necessary for evolution to occur.

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• Johannsen: pure lines, genotype and phenotype

  influenced · Confidence: high

  Johannsen knew the rediscovery of 1900 and introduced the word 'gene' precisely for those 'unit factors', 'elements' or 'allelomorphs' in the gametes which, in his words, Mendelian research had demonstrated; the reality of the gene, he wrote, 'is evident in Mendelism'.

  Dispute: Johannsen derived the word 'gene' not from Mendel but from de Vries's 'pangene' (Intracellulare Pangenesis, 1889), and the pure-line experiment of 1903 was set up against Galton's law, not as a Mendelian cross; Mendelism gave Johannsen not a method but the confidence that units in the gametes are real.

  Link sources

  • Nils Roll-Hansen, The holist tradition in twentieth century genetics. Wilhelm Johannsen's genotype concept, Journal of Physiology 592 (11), 2431-2438 (2014) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Johannsen was well acquainted with recent cytological discoveries and discussions as well as with the 'rediscovery' of Mendel's laws in 1900 (Roll-Hansen 2009, 2014).

  • Robert C. Olby, Mendel, Mendelism and Genetics, MendelWeb (1997) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    The "gene" is nothing but a very applicable little word, easily combined with others, and hence it may be useful as an expression for the "unit factors", "elements" or "allelomorphs" in the gametes, demonstrated by modern Mendelian researches. A "genotype" is the sum total of all the "genes" in a gamete or zygote. . . . As to the nature of the "genes", it is as yet of no value to propose any hypothesis; but that the notion of the "gene" covers a reality is evident in Mendelism.

  • Nils Roll-Hansen, The holist tradition in twentieth century genetics, Journal of Physiology 592 (11), 2431-2438 (2014) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Since Hippocrates, the dominant conception had been 'transmission of the parent's (or ancestor's) personal qualities', i.e. the phenotype. However, Mendelian hybridization and pure line experiments had shown that this was fundamentally mistaken.

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

• 'The Chromosomes in Heredity': chromosome behaviour as the physical basis of Mendel's laws

  influenced · Confidence: high

  Without the rediscovery of 1900 there would have been nothing to compare with: Mendel's laws became a common subject of testing, and only two years later a cytologist began to rework his observations so as to agree with them.

  Dispute: Martins points to the nearest link: what moved Sutton was Bateson's talk in New York in September 1902, so the rediscovery acted not directly but through its English advocate.

  Link sources

  • Lilian Al-Chueyr Pereira Martins, Did Sutton and Boveri propose the so-called Sutton-Boveri chromosome hypothesis?, Genetics and Molecular Biology 22 (2), 261-272 (1999) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Although Sutton's work was essentially cytological, he was led to distrust and review the cytological knowledge of his time, to reconcile it with the facts of heredity otherwise, it would be impossible to explain Mendel's laws. This attitude shows the strength of his reliance in Mendel's theory, only two years after its rediscovery.

  • Lilian Al-Chueyr Pereira Martins, Did Sutton and Boveri propose the so-called Sutton-Boveri chromosome hypothesis?, Genetics and Molecular Biology 22 (2), 261-272 (1999) Verified 20 Sep 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

    In 1900, Mendel's laws were "rediscovered" (Correns, 1900; Tschermak, 1900; De Vries, 1900; Stubbe, 1972; Meijer, 1985; Monaghan and Corcos, 1986). ... After the rediscovery of Mendel's work, a flood of experimental research arose to validate or disprove Mendel's principles.

  • Lilian Al-Chueyr Pereira Martins, Did Sutton and Boveri propose the so-called Sutton-Boveri chromosome hypothesis?, Genetics and Molecular Biology 22 (2), 261-272 (1999) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    It seems that, after hearing a talk delivered during September 1902 by William Bateson (1861-1926) in New York, Sutton suddenly linked his cytological knowledge to the laws of heredity (McKusick, 1960, p. 489).

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• The white-eyed fly: a gene tied to a chromosome, linkage and the first genetic map

  influenced · Confidence: high

  Morgan took up Drosophila not as a Mendelian but as a sceptic: he was irritated by the way facts were being turned into 'factors' after 1900, and he kept flies in order to test Mendelism and the mutation theory with his own hands.

  Dispute: Allen gives a different nearest motive: to test de Vries's mutation theory on animals. The two versions are compatible, since de Vries is himself one of the rediscoverers, but the influence here means a challenge rather than a descent.

  Link sources

  • M. M. Green, 2010: A Century of Drosophila Genetics Through the Prism of the white Gene, Genetics 184 (1), 3-7 (2010) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    As Sturtevant (2001), in a reminiscence of Morgan given in 1967, confirms, “this didn't suit Morgan. So by about 1910, he could fairly be described as anti-Mendelian.” Morgan's skepticism moved him to see for himself the plausibility of Mendelism by searching for heritable phenotypic changes in the vinegar fly, Drosophila melanogaster.

  • Garland E. Allen, Morgan, Thomas Hunt, Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1974) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Morgan’s original purpose had been to test de Vries’s mutation theory in animals.

  • M. M. Green, 2010: A Century of Drosophila Genetics Through the Prism of the white Gene, Genetics 184 (1), 3-7 (2010) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    “In the modern interpretation of Mendelism, facts are being transformed into factors at a rapid rate. If one factor will not explain the facts, then two are invoked; if two prove insufficient, three will sometimes work out.”

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

• The journal Biometrika: the statistics of life gets a journal of its own

  influenced · Confidence: medium

  The immediate impulse to found the journal was the report of Bateson, newly converted to Mendelism, on Pearson's memoir on homotyposis: Bateson was chosen as a referee by the Royal Society, savaged the paper at the meeting of 15 November 1900, and the very next day Weldon proposed to Pearson that they start a journal of their own.

  Dispute: Eisenhart's quotation ties the founding of the journal to Bateson's conversion to Mendelism, not to the rediscovery of 1900 as an event in itself.

  Link sources

  • Churchill Eisenhart, «Pearson, Karl», Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2008) Verified 5 Oct 2026

    William Bateson, biologist and pioneer in genetics, who had just become a convert to Mendel’s theory, was one of those chosen to referee the memoir

  • Churchill Eisenhart, «Pearson, Karl», Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2008) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    In the discussion that followed the presentation, Bateson sharply criticized the paper, its thesis being, in his view, mistaken; and other fellows present added criticism of both its length and its content.

  • Churchill Eisenhart, «Pearson, Karl», Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography (2008) Verified 20 Sep 2026

    Do you think it would be too hopelessly expensive to start a journal of some kind?. . .

  "Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong.

Node sources

• Robert Olby, William Bateson's Introduction of Mendelism to England: A Reassessment, The British Journal for the History of Science 20 (4), 399-420 (extract and references) (1987) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  The recognition of Gregor Mendel's achievement in his study of hybridization was signalled by the 'rediscovery' papers of Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns and Erich Tschermak. The dates on which these papers were published are given in Table 1. The first of these—De Vries 'Comptes rendus paper—was in French and made no mention of Mendel or his paper. The rest, led by De Vries' Berichte paper, were in German and mentioned Mendel, giving the location of his paper.

• Robert Olby, William Bateson's Introduction of Mendelism to England: A Reassessment, The British Journal for the History of Science 20 (4), 399-420 (references 7-8) (1987) Verified 20 Sep 2026, quotation assembled from fragments

  de Vries, H., 'Sur la loi de disjonction des hybrides', C.R. Acad. Sci. Paris (1900), 130, pp. 845–847 ... de Vries, H., 'Das Spaltungsgesetz der Bastarde', Ber. Dtsch. Bot. Ges. (1900), 18, pp. 83–90

• Robert C. Olby, Mendel, Mendelism and Genetics, MendelWeb (1997) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  We now possess evidence that neither Hugo de Vries nor Erich Tschermak arrived independently of Mendel at his theory, although Tschermak did perceive the 3:1 ratio in his F2 data in 1900. Not till De Vries had read Mendel (possibly for the second time) did he reorganize his data and from them select those experiments which confirmed Mendel.

• Robert C. Olby, Mendel, Mendelism and Genetics, MendelWeb (1997) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  Even Correns who, like Tschermak, claimed to have noted the 3:1 ratio by himself, had in fact read Mendel's paper in 1896 and, one suspects, forgot about it (Rheinberger, 1996). He certainly benefited from reading it again in 1900.

• Robert C. Olby, Mendel, Mendelism and Genetics, MendelWeb (1997) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  Now in its day Mendel's work was known and was treated as a contribution to the normal science of that time - a contribution to the evidence for the strength of reversion. Only in a different context and three decades later was it seen as a major novelty deserving the status of discovery.

• Robert C. Olby, Mendel, Mendelism and Genetics, MendelWeb (1997) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  Franz Weiling has laboured hard to unearth references to Mendel's 1865 paper and he has found many.

• Robert C. Olby, Mendel, Mendelism and Genetics, MendelWeb (1997) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  'Each generation, perhaps, found in Mendel's paper only what it expected to find; in the first period a repetition of the hybridization results commonly reported, in the second a discovery in inheritance supposedly difficult to reconcile with continuous evolution. Each generation, therefore, ignored what did not confirm its own expectations.' (R.A.Fisher, 1936, p.171)

• Robert C. Olby, Mendel, Mendelism and Genetics, MendelWeb (1997) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  First his priority was undisputed. Second, he served to neutralize any disputes between the three rediscoverers themselves.

• Daniel J. Fairbanks, Demystifying the mythical Mendel: a biographical review, Heredity 129 (1), 4-11 (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  Mendel sent an offprint to Carl von Nägeli, a renowned botanist whom Unger often praised, on December 31, 1866 with a detailed accompanying letter.

• Daniel J. Fairbanks, Demystifying the mythical Mendel: a biographical review, Heredity 129 (1), 4-11 (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  Darwin owned two books with brief references to Mendel's experiments. One is a book by Hoffmann (1869), which contains short and essentially uninformative references, not likely to lead Darwin to seek Mendel's paper (Olby 1985). The other is a book by Focke (1881), published the year before Darwin's death, which Darwin loaned to a friend.

• Daniel J. Fairbanks, Demystifying the mythical Mendel: a biographical review, Heredity 129 (1), 4-11 (2022) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  In fact, there is evidence to dispel the common notion that Mendel sent uncut offprints. The offprints contain several typesetter errors, which are hand-corrected in the same places and in the same manner in the offprints Mendel sent, evidence that Mendel made the corrections rather than later readers, which he could do only if the offprints were cut (Müller-Wille and Hall 2016; Fairbanks 2022).

• Hui Zhang, Wen Chen, Kun Sun, Mendelism: New Insights from Gregor Mendel's Lectures in Brno, Genetics 207 (1), 1-8 (2017)

  Olby assessed Hoffmann and Focke as having more insight than the newspaper reporter, but he ultimately dismissed all 11 writers who referenced Mendel's work before 1900, including the two botanists and the newspaper reporter, saying that "none really understood Mendel's theory" (Olby and Gautrey 1968).

• Robert Olby, William Bateson's Introduction of Mendelism to England: A Reassessment, BJHS 20 (4), 399-420 (1987) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  I am grateful to Dr A.W.F. Edwards for drawing my attention to the existence of the Cambridge holding of this journal, and to Peter Gautrey for confirming that it was in the possession of the Library by 1880.

• J. S. Wilkie, Some Reasons for the Rediscovery and Appreciation of Mendel's Work in the First Years of the Present Century, The British Journal for the History of Science 1 (1), 5-17 (extract) (1962) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  Three questions of major historical interest may be asked concerning the neglect and the rediscovery of Mendel's work. 1. Why was it so little noticed between its publication in 1866 and its rediscovery in 1900? 2. What factors determined its rediscovery? 3. What factors favoured the rapid growth of Mendelian genetics?

• Alain Corcos, Floyd Monaghan, Role of de Vries in the recovery of Mendel's work: 1. Was de Vries really an independent discoverer of Mendel?, Journal of Heredity 76 (3), 187-190 (abstract) (1985)

  The authors of this review paper cannot but agree with de Vries' critics that he did not develop his law of disjunction independently of Mendel.

• Floyd V. Monaghan, Alain F. Corcos, Tschermak: a non-discoverer of Mendelism II. A critique, Journal of Heredity 78 (3), 208-210 (abstract) (1987)

  An examination of Tschermak's two papers of 1900 not only reinforces our conclusion cited in our first paper on Tschermak that he was not a rediscoverer of Mendelism, but also he did not understand Mendel when he had read it.

• Robert Olby, William Bateson's Introduction of Mendelism to England: A Reassessment, BJHS 20 (4), 399-420 (1987) Verified 20 Sep 2026

  It has long been accepted that the first account of Mendel's work in English was given by the Cambridge zoologist, William Bateson, to an audience of Fellows of the Royal Horticultural Society in London on 8 May, 1900. This is based on two sources: the paper 'Problems of Heredity as a Subject for Horticultural Investigation', published in the Society's journal later that year and stated as 'Read 8 May, 1900', and Beatrice Bateson's account of the event over a quarter of a century later.

"Verified" means that on that day the quotation was found at the address given, word for word. No date means we have not been able to open the source yet, not that the quotation is wrong. "Assembled from fragments" means the words do not stand together on the page: we found each fragment separately and joined them with an ellipsis.

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