In Pursuit of the Gene

70 ¨ PANGENES
he took a position as a high school teacher in Amsterdam, and spent summers
at the University of Würzburg, where he conducted a series of elegant
experiments on plant movement under the supervision of the great German
plant physiologist Julius Sachs, a diehard reductionist and one of the
principal promoters of the modern mechanistic approach to plant physiology.
In Würzburg, home to Virchow and Haeckel and the richest vein of
German cell biology, De Vries’s sense of the world of biology and his possible
role in it began to take shape. Over a period of three summers with
Sachs, De Vries wrote several beautiful papers.
It was De Vries’s good fortune that Charles Darwin shared his somewhat
obscure interest in the nature of plant movement. In 1875 Darwin
sent De Vries a complimentary copy of his new book, On the Movements and
Habits of Climbing Plants, which contained no fewer than five glowing references
to De Vries and his excellent studies! Exceedingly polite, De Vries
wrote back that his papers “should not be entitled to such honor as you bestow
on them.” 1 This led to another exchange of letters in which Darwin,
with his characteristic blend of scientific generosity and self-interest, gently
tried to steer De Vries in the direction that Darwin himself found most interesting.
Inspired by Darwin’s high praise and the generally positive reception
of his work, De Vries accepted a full-time position in a Prussian university,
which he hoped would eventually lead him to a full-fledged academic
career. After enduring two years in the intensely hierarchical German university
system, De Vries leaped at the opportunity to return to Amsterdam
as an instructor at the newly formed Athenaeum University. 2 A year later,
in the fall of 1878, at the extraordinarily young age of 29, he was made a
professor.
During the summer before he assumed his professorship, De Vries paid
a final visit to Würzburg, where he was introduced to Darwin’s youngest
son, Francis. Through Francis, De Vries saw the means to renew his acquaintance
with the old man himself and in so doing burnish his already
brilliant debut in academic science. Several weeks later, with invitations to
visit the cream of British botanists in hand, De Vries left for England. Once
there, he quickly managed to get himself invited to dinner with the influ-