A Monk And Two Peas: The Story Of Gregor Mendel And The Discovery: The Story of Gregor Mendel and the Discovery of Genetics: Amazon.co.uk: Robin Marantz Henig: Books

Amazon.co.uk Review

A Monk and Two Peas is a further addition to the raft of chunkily packaged little episodes from the history of scientific discovery bobbing hopefully in the wake of Dava Sobell's Longitude. It is the story of Gregor Mendel, the Silesian monk who in the mid-19th century single-handedly discovered the rules governing the modern science of genetics--which were then forgotten until years after his death. Little beyond its outline is known of Mendel's life, and nothing survives of his work except two published papers--no notes, no experimental records. Mendel evidently planted his peas, recorded the results and deduced from them the principles of heritability (how he actually proceeded is the subject of considerable debate). In the end, he appears to have been persuaded by a colleague, whose motives we cannot now recover, that his work was of little worth. That's the story and it's an absorbing lesson in how important discoveries can go unnoticed until, for whatever reason, their time comes round. But it also means that the first part of the book, which is an account of Mendel's life and work, would be pretty sparse had Henig not elected to pad it out with a great deal of speculative, semi-fictional scene-painting of the "Mendel must have thought, as he paced between the rows of peas..." variety. One entire account of an uneventful journey London seems to have been included solely to provide a context for an imaginary conversation between Darwin and Mendel (Darwin shaking his head over his poor understanding of inheritance and wishing he had Mendel's help). Henig admits it is "very unlikely" this conversation took place. The second part of the book deals with the controversies that followed the rediscovery of Mendel's work at the beginning of the 20th century. Here too, although Henig has more material she cannot resist a flourish. The geneticist William Bateson, prime mover on behalf of Mendel, moves to Grantchester: cue a quote from Rupert Brooke and an account of his death. Readers must decide whether they find this kind of thing helpful. The rather windy belle-lettrism evaporates when Henig gets into the science: her writing firms up and there is genuine excitement in following Mendel's patient unravelling of the complex rules of inheritance through dominant and recessive genes. So too there is drama in the battles of Bateson and his followers and opponents as they struggle to establish a physical mechanism to support Mendel's findings. Throughout the book, Henig deftly sketches in the background of scientific discovery and controversy against which the story takes place. --Robin Davidson

Product Description

The story of the monk who experimented with peas in his monastery has all the highs and lows of great fiction. Mendel was a man of nervous constitution (whenever he had to visit the sick and dying he was so overcome physically that he had to take to bed) who was determined to work out how traits are inherited. He spent seven years in the monastery garden experimenting on over 300,000 strains of plants. Determined to discover how species change, adapt and arise anew but essentially remain the same from generation to generation, he worked out that traits are inherited independently, that they come in pairs, one from each parent. Mendel presented a paper outlining his findings in 1865, just 6 years after Darwin's The Origins of Species came out. While Darwin's work provoked agitated debate, Mendel continued to labour away in silence in his garden and his work was completely ignored. Mendel sent his paper to fellow scientist Carl von Nageli who told Mendel that his work was incomplete and unconvincing. He encouraged Mendel to create hybrids from hawkweed which Naegeli knew was incredibly difficult to achieve as he had himself spent years working on them. Was he furious that a younger man had struck on something far more original than he could ever produce? Did he deliberately divert the monk After Mendel's death all his papers were burnt in a bonfire in the monastery. Was this routine housekeeping or the result of a fit of jealousy by a monk who succeeded him as abbot? Finally, in 1900, 35 years after it first appeared, Mendel's paper was found by the Cambridge scientist William Bateson. It became immediately apparent that Mendel was onto something extremely significant. Had Darwin known about his work many of the debates about the details of natural selection might have been resolved. This is a captivating book about a remarkable and neglected man who played an enormous role in our understanding of the mechanisms of life itself.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

A patient monk and his co-operative peas 24 Sep 2004

By Sally-Anne

Format:Paperback

Gregor Mendel experimented with dozens of pea varieties and thousands of plants - not just two, as the book title suggests. Today he's often referred to as 'the father of genetics', but he was largely ignored and unappreciated by his scientific peers in his own life time. In this book he is analysed, reassessed, embellished and praised. His life is scrutinised from beginning to end and beyond. Where detailed facts are lacking, speculation fills the space and there's quite a lot of space to fill because historical records are scarce.

Speculations concerning the personalities of dead scientists who can no longer defend themselves, made me feel uncomfortable. I had a strong impression that Henig disliked some of the people she was describing. William Bateson (a Mendel promoter), Hugo De Vries (a Mendel detractor) and Carl von Nageli (a Mendel distracter) may have been as vain, ambitious, dishonourable, arrogant and unreasonable as she paints them, but I would have preferred to read just the unvarnished facts and drawn my own conclusions. It seems unfair to put words into their mouths and motives into their minds in pointless speculations that add nothing useful and (possibly) slur the reputations of people whose living relatives might be upset.

On the other hand, it's easy reading, plain English, nothing too technical and, on the whole, quite enjoyable. Despite all the embroidery, I feel I probably have a not-too-inaccurate sense of what sort of person Mendel was and the contribution he made to genetics. As a result of reading this book, I have a lot of sympathy for the man and a lot of admiration too. What a patient and methodical worker! How sad, that he didn't get the recognition he deserved while he was alive. I was surprised to learn that Charles Darwin had missed an opportunity to read Mendel's work. What Mendel had learned from his pea plant experiments would have been very useful to Darwin. In fact, it was just what he needed to support his own theory about natural selection - the missing piece of his jigsaw puzzle. It seems, Mendel requested forty reprints of a journal article (a publication of his complete papers for a lecture he gave on his pea experiments and his conclusions about inheritance) and he sent copies to several eminent people including Darwin. Darwin's copy was not even opened. The edges had to be cut to open it and it was left on a shelf with its edges still intact. What a pity. Darwin suffered long-term poor health. Perhaps he was having one of his health or family crises when the paper arrived.

If you're interested in finding out about the life of Gregor Mendel, this is an easy read - but bear in mind that it's a fuzzy mixture of fact and guesswork.

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a perfect introduction to Mendelian genetics 11 Mar 2010

By Miss

I have always suspected Mendel's theory of genetic inheritance to be truly beautiful science. His experiments with pea-plants during the late 1850's, in a monastery greenhouse in the Czech town of Brno, are beautiful in their simplicity. The elegance of his conclusions owes much to empirical method, detailed research, a mind able to apply statistics to botany, and - above all - endless patience.

Gregor Mendel's story is a sad one. Born into an impoverished agricultural family, and with a crippling level of anxiety and insecurity, Mendel struggled to earn his education. Frequent bouts of depression, and debilitating test-anxiety, troubled his future prospects until a friendly teacher suggested he join St. Thomas' monastery, which had a reputation as a supportive and highly intellectual community in the Augustinian tradition. There, he found a welcoming library, like-minded souls, and a cosy greenhouse (the only place to keep warm in the medieval monastery). In particular, he found solace in gardening. A kindly abbot built a glasshouse especially for Gregor to potter in and tend to his expanding collection of pea-plants.

Mendel was fascinated by the way peas could pass on certain characteristic to succeeding generations, and he devised a series of experiments to ascertain whether there was any general rule to heredity. In this way, over a period of six years, Mendel discovered that particular traits could be 'dominant' or 'recessive', and he distinguished between a phenotype (how genes are physically expressed) and a genotype (underlying genetic makeup), thereby laying the ground for a modern understanding of genetics. In his time, however, Mendel was largely ignored. He printed 40 copies of his paper, which he presented before Brno's men of science, but its importance was not understood. Either it was too difficult to understand or it was ignored. One of the recipients was Charles Darwin, but the paper remained uncut upon a high shelf and was never read by Darwin. The only recipient to reply did so in a spirit of malignant envy, viewing Mendel as a rival who had to be thwarted, which he successfully did by misdirecting Mendel's subsequent research and making the monk doubt everything his theory had proved. Mendel gave up his research and died in obscurity. It would take a further 50 years before botanists working on the same problem came across his paper, citing him simultaneously. Each one craved the recognition that rightfully belonged to Gregor Mendel, and it was only to take the wind out of the sails of the first botanist to lay claim to Mendel's theory that other botanists advanced Mendel's name.

'A Monk and Two Peas' is a riveting narrative but a little over-written bu author Robin Marantz-Henig. It is, however, clear and concise; a perfect introduction to Mendelian genetics for the general reader. It may be too speculative and hyperbolic for historians of science, who would presumably know much of the material anyway, but for anyone more interested in the stories behind the science it is engaging and vividly written.

Interesting Speculation, Gene-Geeks May Spot Errors 28 Dec 2008

By S. Hartwell

Mendel's peas will be familiar to those who studied biology at secondary school. The first half of this book is a reconstruction of the life of Gregor Mendel, the modest monk who carried out hybridisation experiments between peas to see how several characteristics (including flower colour, seed colour, seed texture and height) were inherited and whether the characteristics were blended in the progeny or could occur as throwbacks a few generations later. As his diaries were destroyed after his death this contains a great deal of speculation based on monastic life and the lives of those he sent his papers to.

The second part of the book follows the rediscovery of Mendel's work. There is far more material extant, but Henig still pads this into a novelised version. Although Henig obviously understands and writes lucidly on the science, I have a niggle: the diagram data presented was insufficient for the reader to determine whether white-eyed Drosophila were sex-limited or sex-linked. A little investigation shows that Henig incorrectly called it sex-limited, but it is actually sex-linked.

Apart from the speculation and that gene terminology error, it's an interesting read about the life Mendel may have led and about how his work was rediscovered so this monk who left no biological offspring became the "father" of genetics. The evolution/creation of now-familiar genetics terminology also covered.