The Chromosomes in Heredity 



WALTER S. SUTTON 



Reprinted by publisher's permission from Bio- 

 logical Bulletin, vol. 4, 1903, pp. 231-251. 



It has often happened that two people have nmde practically iden- 

 tical discoveries ajid published their findi?jgs ahiost simnltajieoiisly. 

 This has bee?i particidarly true in getietics, which fiiids its 7?ioder?i 

 origiji in the tripartite publicity MendePs paper received at the turn 

 of the century. The hypothesis adva?iced in this paper by Sutton was 

 also cojiceived by Boveri and published m the same year. As a con- 

 sequence, the theory that the hereditary particles are borne by the 

 chromosomes is known as the "'Sutton-Boveri Hypothesis." 



Sutton does not provide any original data m this paper. It repre- 

 sejits a different type of co?itribution from that seeji iji the first two 

 papers in this collection, which are priinarily aiialyses of research 

 results. Suttoji has performed a vital fimction here; 07ie that is almost 

 as vital as research itself in biological progress. Whe?i a?i author takes 

 a series of apparently unrelated facts ajjd ideas from two areas of 

 investigatio??, combines them so that they make ?iew se??se, and 

 develops a new hypothesis from the combination, he not only aids 

 in the advance of both fields but also is quite likely to open up a ?iew 

 one. This is the kind of contribution Darwin made i?i his ^'Origi?i of 

 Species,'" which is almost efitirely a correlation a?id syjithesis of 

 several diverse groups of facts. In Sutton's paper you will see this 

 developmeiit of relatiojiships betwee?j the fields of cytology and 

 heredity, which, at the time Sutton wrote, were cojisidered to be 

 fairly diverge?it fro?n each other, iji that ?io research techniques were 

 shared. Today the two fields are permanently li?iked, many research 

 methods have developed to handle mutual problems, and Sutton's 

 paper can be considered the begmning of the field called cyto- 

 genetics. 



You shoidd note as you read the sequence and develop?nejit of 

 Sutton's arguments, and the clear logic and reasoning he employs. 

 This paper is a good model to follow in the preparation of a study 

 ifivolvijig synthesis and correlation. It is comparatively easy to read 

 and understand. Caution shoidd be used in the last few pages, for 

 Sutton gets involved in generalities that go well beyond the limits of 

 his analysis. The value of this paper lies in the thoroughness with 

 which Suttoji demonstrates the validity of his hypothesis, and not 

 in the attejnpts to explain many other problems through the use of 

 the hypothesis. 



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