In Pursuit of the Gene

304 ¨ NOTES TO PAGES 84–89
27. Ibid., 215.
28. T. J. Stomps, “On the Rediscovery of Mendel’s Work by Hugo de Vries,” Journal
of Heredity 45 (1954): 294.
5. MENDEL
1. Today Heinzendorf lies in the eastern corner of the Czech Republic.
2. Mendel reports that he was forced to support himself in his third-person autobiography,
which appears in translation in Robert C. Olby, Origins of Mendelism
(New York: Schocken Books, 1966), 175–178. The nature of the accident is described
in Hugo Iltis, Life of Mendel (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1932), 38. Iltis, who
salvaged the remnants of Mendel’s papers, which had been largely destroyed after
his death, wrote the first and definitive biography of Mendel. See Olby, Origins of
Mendelism, 103 for the history of Mendel’s papers.
3. Iltis, Life of Mendel, 35–36. See also Vitezslav Orel, Gregor Mendel: The First Geneticist,
trans. S. Finn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 41.
4. Iltis, Life of Mendel, 38, 39.
5. When he became Abbot, Mendel provided all three of his sister’s nephews with
room and board at the monastery while they attended Gymnasium in Brunn, and
later he covered the cost for their medical educations at Vienna University (Olby,
Origins of Mendelism, 120–121).
6. Iltis, Life of Mendel, 39.
7. The autobiographical statement in Olby, Origins of Mendelism, 177.
8. Orel, Gregor Mendel, 52.
9. Iltis, Life of Mendel, 47–49, 54, 56.
10. In his autobiography, Mendel wrote that in the monastery “he had been relieved
of that anxiety about the physical basis of existence which is so detrimental
to study, the respectful undersigned acquired fresh courage and energy ...His
fondness for natural science grew with every fresh opportunity for making himself
acquainted with it ...hehasever since been so much addicted to the study of nature
that he would shrink from no exertions which might help him, by further diligence
on his own part and by the advice of men who have had practical experience,
to fill the gaps in his information” (Olby, Origins of Mendelism, 177).
11. Iltis, Life of Mendel, 62.
12. Orel, Gregor Mendel, 52.
13. Iltis, Life of Mendel, 57.