1910s Timeline - John Innes Centre

1913 A. H. Sturtevant produces
the first Genetic Map in
Drosophila
Alfred Sturtevant, an
undergraduate working with
Morgan at Columbia, provides the
experimental basis for the linkage
concept in Drosophila and devises a
visual representation or ‘map’ to
show the links
1913-14 Nikolai Vavilov joins the
JIHI as Visiting Researcher
Nikolai Vavilov, a recent graduate
of the Moscow Agricultural
Institute, and on an official tour of
the main biological laboratories of
Western Europe, arrives at the JIHI
with an established interest in plant
selection and the work of Gregor
Mendel. He is deeply impressed
with Bateson, both as a scientist
and as a democratic administrator
who allowed his staff great
freedom to pursue their individual
scientific ideas and experiments.
Vavilov completes his postgraduate
thesis at JIHI which entitles him to
become a professor on his return to
Russia. In 1917 he became a
professor at Saratov University,
south-east of Moscow and in 1921
moved to head the Applied Biology
Branch at Petrograd (St
Petersburg). From these
beginnings he built up the All-
Union Institute of Plant Breeding,
one of the world’s most
distinguished centres of research in
plant selection and genetics.
1914 Bateson is President of the
British Association in Australia
Bateson leaves for Australia in June
to preside over the British
Association meeting; he returns in
November. Extracts of Bateson’s
lectures on the mechanisms of
inheritance and on eugenic themes
at the Melbourne and Sydney
meetings are published in The
Times and in the American press
where they arouse interest and
opposition. Bateson continues to
deny chromosome theory. T H
Morgan responds ‘We ourselves are
going to get after you soon in a
small book we are writing on ‘The
Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity’
1914-1918 World War I
The war of 1914-1918 curtails the
work of the Institution. By
September 1915 Bateson has
already lost from his scientific staff
G. O. Sherrard (self-sterility in fruit
trees); J. W. Lesley (potato
breeding); M.A. Bailey (plant
pathology); C. B. Williams
(entomology), and C. W.
Richardson (strawberry breeding)
to the war effort. Many of the
garden staff have also left for the
army or for munitions work. Those
that remain are having difficulty
making ends meet as inflation
spirals; they successfully agitate for
an increase in wages. By 1916 the
Board of Agriculture is encouraging
the Institution to use space not
required for experiments to grow
vegetables. About 20,000 seedling
vegetables are raised and
distributed free to local allotmentholders.
In 1917 only three research
workers remain. Many do not
return: the workers not lost to the
war are lost to the Empire.
After the war Bateson recruits new
staff and enlarges the premises by
adding two larger laboratories and
a library.
1915 T H Morgan and his
colleagues publish Mechanism of
Mendelian Heredity
Morgan’s team offer a
comprehensive chromosomal
interpretation of heredity. They
teach that the determinants of the
hereditary characters are the genes
which are resident in the
chromosomes, each gene having its
own particular place or locus in a
particular chromosome
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