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Hugo de Vries was a Dutch botanist who made important contributions to the theory of evolution and was one of the first to point out the importance of Gregor Mendel's work.
Background
Hugo de Vries was born in Haarlem, Netherlands on February 16, 1848 to Gerrit de Vries, a lawyer and deacon in the Mennonite congregation in Haarlem and later Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1872 until 1874 and Maria Everardina Reuvens.
Education
Hugo de Vries studied at the University of Leyden, where he received his doctorate in 1870, and at the University of Heidelberg under Wilhelm Hofmeister.
Career
From 1871 to 1875 he taught in Amsterdam, continuing his studies during summer vacations in Wurzburg under Julius von Sachs. For two years he worked for the Prussian ministry of agriculture in Wurzburg, and in 1877 he taught at the universities of Halle and Amsterdam. He was appointed assistant professor at Amsterdam in 1878 and full professor in 1881. In 1904 he lectured at the University of California. De Vries retired in 1918. Among the varied scientific pursuits of de Vries, two related guiding interests are apparent: the physiology of the plant cell and the mechanism of evolution. The foundation of the central problem of evolution in the facts of cell physiology had been perceived by the Swiss Carl von Nageli (1817 - 1891), one of the ranking botanists of the previous generation. Both von Nageli and de Vries began their physiological studies with investigations of osmotic phenomena in the plant cell, and both then turned to problems relating to heredity and its physical basis. De Vries' writings make it clear that he considered his studies on osmosis to be a direct continuation of von Nageli's work; however, he failed to appreciate the considerable merits of von Nageli's speculations on the physical apparatus involved in heredity. The physiological studies of de Vries occupied roughly the years 1878 to 1889. His work on osmosis is of the greatest importance, since, together with that of Wilhelm Pfeffer (1877), it supplied an important part of the evidence upon which J. H. van't Hoff based his theory of chemical equilibrium in dilute solutions (1886). In a paper published in 1884, de Vries explained how the phenomenon of plasmolysis (the shrinking of living cells when placed in a solution of a concentration greater than that of their contents) could be used to establish a set of isotonic solutions--the word "isotonic" was first used by de Vries. If a solution of one substance is taken as a term of comparison and the concentrations (expressed in gram-molecules) of other substances in solutions producing the same degree of plasmolysis are ascertained, a set of numbers expressing the relative concentrations can be found; these numbers indicate simple proportions: 2, 3, 4, and 5. This significant fact was used by van't Hoff in his theoretical treatment. Intracellular Pangenesis. The year 1889 marked the beginning of de Vries' publications on heredity. In this year appeared his influential monograph Intracellular Pangenesis, in which he developed Darwin's theory of pangenesis, but omitted its Lamarckian elements (inheritance of environmentally induced characteristics). Darwin imagined the physical carriers of heredity as moving from all parts of an animal's body to its reproductive organs. De Vries postulated that the particles (which he called pangenes) are transmitted from one cell to another only during cell division. In this theory he agreed with August Weismann who in 1885 published his theory of the "continuity of the germ plasm. " However, Weismann believed that a full set of particles or pangenes was present only in the germ cells, whereas de Vries argued that most, if not all, cells of the adult organism possess the full number of pangenes characteristic of the species. This conclusion he supported by evidence derived from studies of plant galls. It had been shown by other investigators that the galls of grasses produce root tissue from a part of the grass plant which would not normally produce roots. Thus, the pangenes responsible for root formation must be widely present in the plant and not limited to the roots themselves. De Vries made the important statement that, in general, a pangene does not represent a cell or organ, but a character. This departure from the theories of Darwin and Weismann shows that de Vries, as early as 1889, was approaching a more Mendelian point of view. Another idea of cardinal importance which appears, although tentatively, in this monograph is that the particles responsible for heredity cannot be transformed gradually, but change only by sudden leaps, however small. In the 1890's, de Vries and William Bateson, an English zoologist, became the principal advocates of a theory of evolution by discontinuous steps, or mutations. Mutation Theory. De Vries devoted two large volumes, The Mutation Theory (1901, 1903) to the establishment of his thesis that a living thing is a mosaic of relatively independent and discontinuously varying characters. He collected in these works the empirical evidence for the sudden appearance of new varieties or subspecies and argued that mutation is the only way in which stable new forms could be produced. De Vries attached considerable importance to the new varieties of the evening primrose, Oenothera lamarckiana, which he observed in his own experimental garden; it should not be inferred, however, that his thesis depends to any large extent upon his studies of Oenothera. Subsequent work on this genus has shown that many of the new forms noted by de Vries were not gene variants. The second volume of The Mutation Theory contains numerous references to the work of Mendel, which had been rediscovered in 1900. In that year de Vries, Karl Correns, and Erich Tschermak published independently the results of hybridization experiments which seemed to require for their explanation the postulate of separate and mutually independent factors of inheritance underlying the statistical results. All three authors pointed out the similarity between their results and those obtained by Mendel, published in 1866. The suggestion that de Vries profited from his reading of Mendel's paper and had no intention of disclosing the source of his inspiration appears to rest on a misunderstanding concerning dates of publication. After 1903 de Vries concerned himself principally with further studies of mutant forms of Oenothera and with the development of his theory of evolution by discontinuous variation. In Species-Formation by Groups (1913) he suggested that genes may exist in three principal forms: active, latent, and labile. This suggestion, which does not seem to have been particularly fruitful, was prompted by the need to explain the unusual frequency with which Oenothera produces new varieties. The work of de Vries in establishing the modern form of the Darwinian theory of evolution--evolution by the natural selection of mutants--was of the utmost significance.