Abstract
‘Genes before 1944’ outlines the development in our understanding of genes based on Gregor Mendel’s work carried out in 1866 on hereditary factors, to Oswald Avery’s paper on the chemical composition of DNA and the identity of the ‘transforming principle’ with a gene. Two completely separate lines of work led to our modern view, and they came together in the mid-twentieth century to create the new science of molecular biology. One of these lines of work was the study of heredity by biological experimentation and the other was the study of the chemistry of DNA.
