Hugo de Vries

Hugo Marie de Vries , in French Hugo Marie De Vries , is a Dutch botanist born with Haarlem the February 16th 1848 and deceased the May 21st 1935 with Lunteren. He invented the term of Mutation in science of heredity.

Without to have read the conclusions of Mendel on the transmission of the characters of the plants, it arrives at the same conclusions. Its work was published in 1900 at the same time in French and German. The name of Mendel is not mentioned in French work but in German work.

In December 1901, Hugo de Vries puts in agitation the universe of the botanists: while isolating from the wild varieties of banal a grass with the asses (a species that it names Oenothera lamarckiana , but which was to be, actually, Oenothera glazioviana Micheli), it realized that those presented, in addition to their variations in experiments observable, a series of variations abrupt and discontinuous, sufficiently radical to generate what seems to be new species. It thus gave to this phenomenon the name of Mutation, which it opposes to the concept of fluctuating and limited variability, postulated by Darwin. Nevertheless, Hugo de Vries joined Charles Darwin on a point: it estimates that the natural selection plays a key role and justifies the survival of most suited. It was with Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak-Seysenegg, one of the three scientists who redécouvrirent the Lois of Mendel. It receives the Médaille Darwin in 1906 and the Médaille linnéenne in 1929. Hugo de Vries became foreign member of the Royal Society the May 11th 1905.

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