Imre Festetics
Hungarian scientist (1764-1847)
Count Imre Festetics de Tolna (1764–1847) was a landowner and geneticist.
Imre Festetics | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Imre (Emmerich) Festetics 1764 Simaság, Austrian Empire (now Hungary) |
| Died | Template:Dya Kőszeg, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) |
| Known for | Creating the science of genetics |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Genetics |
Scientific works change
Imre Festetics studued the breeding of sheep. He published some rules of heredity, and was the first to refer to these as "genetic laws of nature" (Die genetischen Gesatze der Natur). In so doing he used the term genetic for the first time, 80 years before William Bateson did. [1]
Genetic Laws of Nature change
- Healthy plants and robust animals are able to propagate and inherit their specific characteristics.
- Traits of grandparents that are different from those of the immediate progeny may reappear in later generations.
- Animals possessing desirable traits that have been inherited over many generations can sometimes have offspring with divergent traits. Such progeny are variants or freaks of nature, and are unsuitable for further propagation if the aim is the heredity of specific traits.
- A precondition for successful application of inbreeding is scrupulous selection of stock animals.
Festetics was hindered by the complex nature of his study traits, which were aspects of wool quality. We now know this is polygenic, that is, controlled by many genes. It does not give clear-cut "Mendelian" ratios. When Gregor Mendel turned his attention to inheritance many of the principles had already been sketched out by Festetics.
References change
- ↑ Poczai, Péter; Bell, Neil; Hyvönen, Jaakko (2014-01-21). "Imre Festetics and the Sheep Breeders' Society of Moravia: Mendel's Forgotten "Research Network"". PLoS Biology. 12 (1): e1001772. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001772. ISSN 1545-7885. PMC 3897355. PMID 24465180.
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