JOHANNSEN, WILHELM. 1857-1927.


Elemente der exakten Erblichkeitslehre. Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1909. 8vo. Tables in text. Early 20th-century cloth-backed marbled boards. Provenance: Friedrich Schwangart (1874-1958) doctor of zoology and a recognized Felidae specialist (owner's stamp on title and some pencil notes to margins); William Coleman (1934-1988), historian of science ("Cambridge, 1960," owner's name on paste-down). FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL TEXTBOOK ON GENETICS ON THE CONTINENT. "Johannsen was one of the founders of the science of genetics. His view of the unit of heredity, to which he first gave the name 'gene' (1909), has survived the changes brought about by the discovery of the physical basis of heredity, first in the chromosomes and then more precisely in the structure of the nucleic acids" (DSB 7, pp 113-115).