SMOCOVITIS, VASSILIKI BETTY. Dept. History, 4131 Turlington Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611. - Plant Genetics after Mendel: E.B. Babcock, G. Ledyard Stebbins and the Genus Crepis.
This paper explores the efforts of two Berkeley geneticists E. B.
Babcock and G. Ledyard Stebbins to understand the genetic basis of
evolutionary change in the complex plant genus, Crepis. The paper
introduces us to an important research project that has been neglected
by historians. Begun in the nineteen-teens, the project on the
genetics and systematics of the genus Crepis (and its relatives) was
meant to emulate the success of the Drosophila genetics research
program that was orchestrated by Thomas Hunt Morgan at Columbia
University and later at the California Institute of Technology. The
project was in fact Babcock's dream of finding an easily tractable
model organism that would integrate genetics with systematics, but
that would also resolve some persistent problems in plant genetics
that remained unexplained after Mendel. The paper traces the history
of the articulation of the polyploid complex and ends with the
publication of Babcocks' Genus Crepis in 1947. The paper additionally
locates Babcock and Stebbins in the agricultural context of the
University of California, Berkeley, and Babcock's pioneering efforts
to create one of the first departments of genetics in the United
States.
Key words: Berkeley, Crepis, E. B. Babcock, G. L. Stebbins, Mendelian genetics