Volume 2 scientists

CHAPTER SCIENTIST CONTRIBUTION

1 PANCHANAN He worked on embryological aspects and popularised the use
MAHESHWARI of embryological characters in taxonomy.
He established the Department of Botany, University of Delhi
as an important centre of research in embryology and tissue
culture.
He also emphasised the need for initiation of work on artificial
culture of immature embryos.
His work on test tube fertilisation and intra-ovarian pollination
won worldwide acclaim.
He encouraged general education and made a significant
contribution to school education by his leadership in bringing
out the very first textbooks of Biology for Higher Secondary
Schools published by NCERT in 1964.

5 James Dewey Watson He received his Ph.D. degree in 1950 on a study of the effect
of hard X-rays on bacteriophage multiplication.

5 Francis Harry Compton  He completed Ph.D. in 1954 on a thesis entitled “X-ray

Crick Diffraction: Polypeptides and Proteins”.
 Proposed replication of DNA.
 Proposed the Central dogma in molecular biology, which
states that the genetic information flows from DNA-RNA-
Protein.
 He postulated the presence of an adapter molecule
(tRNA)
that would on one hand read the code and on other hand
would bind to specific amino acids.

5 Watson And Crick Proposed the complementary double-helical configuration.

‘‘It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have
postulated immediately suggests a possible copying
mechanism for the genetic material’’ (Watson and Crick,
1953).

The honours to Watson with Crick include:

a. the John Collins Warren Prize of the Massachusetts
General Hospital, in 1959;
b. the Lasker Award, in 1960;
c. the Research Corporation Prize, in 1962 and
d. above all, the Nobel Prize in 1962.

4 Gregor Mendel, He conducted hybridisation experiments on garden peas

Pisum Sativum for seven years (1856-1863) and proposed the
3 laws of inheritance in living organisms ie.
1st Law of Dominance,
2nd Law of Segregation (Purity of gametes) and
3rd Law of Independent Assortment.
 SCIENTIST CONTRIBUTION
4 British geneticist, The production of gametes by the parents, the formation
Reginald C. Punnett of the zygotes, the F1 and F2 plants can be understood from a
diagram called Punnett Square.

4 In 1900, three They independently rediscovered Mendel’s results on the

Scientists (de Vries, inheritance of characters.
Correns and von
Tschermak)
4 Walter Sutton and They noted that the behaviour of chromosomes was parallel to
Theodore Boveri the behaviour of genes and used chromosome movement.
They argued that the pairing and separation of a pair of
chromosomes would lead to the segregation of a pair of
factors they carried.

4 Thomas Hunt Morgan  Morgan worked with the tiny fruit flies, Drosophila
melanogaster wrt Linkage.
 Experimental verification of the chromosomal theory of
inheritance.
 Morgan carried out several dihybrid crosses in Drosophila
to study genes that were sex-linked. He said that F2 ratio
deviated very significantly from the 9:3:3:1 ratio.
 He found that the genes white and yellow were very tightly
linked and showed only 1.3 % recombination while white
and miniature wing showed 37.2 % recombination.

4 Alfred Sturtevant He used the frequency of recombination between gene pairs

Student of Morgan on the same chromosome as a measure of the distance
between genes and ‘mapped’ their position on the
chromosome.

4 Henking (1891) He could trace a specific nuclear structure all through

spermatogenesis in a few insects, and it was also observed by
him that 50 per cent of the sperm received this structure after
spermatogenesis, whereas the other 50 per cent sperm did not
receive it. Henking gave a name to this structure as the X body

4 Langdon Down (1866). Described Trisomy 21.

4 Henry Klinefelter Described Trisomy XXY

4 Henry Turner Described Monosomy (44 Autosomes +X0)

5 Friedrich Meischer in Named acidic DNA as ‘Nuclein

1869.
5 Maurice Wilkins and X-ray diffraction data on which double helix model was
Rosalind Franklin formulated.
 SCIENTIST CONTRIBUTION
5 Erwin Chargaff For a double stranded DNA, the ratios between Adenine and
Thymine and Guanine and Cytosine are constant and equals
one
ie. A+G / T+C =1

5 Frederick Griffith (1928) Carried out experiments with Rough and Smooth strains of
Streptococcus pneumoniae. Proposed about a “transforming
principle”

5 Oswald Avery, Colin They worked to determine the biochemical nature of

MacLeod &Maclyn ‘transforming principle’ in Griffith's experiment suggesting that
McCarty (1933-44), the DNA caused the transformation.

5 Alfred Hershey and The unequivocal proof that DNA is the genetic material using
Martha Chase (1952) bacteriophages and E.coli bacteria

5 Matthew Meselson and Semi conservative DNA replication using E.coli in a medium
Franklin Stahl (1958) containing 15NH4Cl

5 Taylor and colleagues Semi conservative DNA replication using radioactive thymidine
(1958) in Vicia faba (faba beans)

5 George Gamow, a He argued that since there are only 4 bases and if they have
physicist to code for 20 amino acids, the code should constitute a
combination of bases.
Triplet codon ie. 43=64 whicch is sufficient to code for 20
amino acids.

5 Har Gobind Khorana He developed the chemical method instrumental in

synthesising RNA molecules with defined combinations of
bases (homopolymers and copolymers).

5 Marshall Nirenberg Cell-free system for protein synthesis finally helped the code to
be deciphered.

5 Francois Jacob Lac operon elucidation

(Geneticist) & Jacque
Monod ( biochemist)
5 Frederick Sanger. Developed method for determination of amino acid sequences
in proteins.
The DNA Fragments were sequenced using automated DNA
sequencers

5 Alec Jeffreys DNA fingerprinting, VNTR

6 Louis Pasteur Life comes only from pre-existing life &dismissed Spontaneous
generation theory.He showed that in pre-sterilised flasks, life
didn’t come from killed yeast &in another flask open to air, new
living organisms arose from ‘killed yeast’.
 SCIENTIST CONTRIBUTION
6 Oparin of Russia and They proposed that the first form of life could have come from
Haldane of England pre-existing non-living organic molecules (e.g. RNA, protein,
etc.) and that formation of life was preceded by chemical
evolution, i.e., formation of diverse organic molecules from
inorganic constituents. Chemical Evolution ie first abiogenesis
followed by biogenesis.

6 S.L. Miller, an He created electric discharge in a closed flask containing CH4,

American scientist in H2, NH3 and water vapour at 8000C. He observed formation of
1953 amino acids.

6 Charles Darwin  Theory of Natural Selection based on observations

made during a sea voyage in a sail ship called H.M.S.
Beagle round the world, concluded that existing living
forms share similarities to varying degrees not only among
themselves but also with life forms that existed millions of
years ago.
 Natural selection is a mechanism of evolution.
 Reproductive fitness- Those who are better fit in an
environment, leave more progeny than others.
 Observed small black birds later called Darwin’s Finches
on the Galapagos islands. All the varieties, he
conjectured, evolved on the island itself- Adaptive
Radiation.
 Branching descent and natural selection are the two key
concepts of Darwinian Theory of Evolution.
 Darwin showed how even a slow growing animal like
elephant could reach enormous numbers in the absence
of checks.
 He was convinced that interspecific competition is a
potent force in organic evolution.

6 Alfred Wallace, a He worked in Malay Archipelago & had also come to similar
naturalist conclusions around the same time as Charles Darwin.

6 Ernst Heckel Embryological support for evolution based upon the

observation of certain features during embryonic stage
common to all vertebrates that are absent in adult.Ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny.

6 Karl Ernst von Baer Disproved theory of Ernst Heckel. He noted that embryos
never pass through the adult stages of other animals.
 SCIENTIST CONTRIBUTION
6 French naturalist Evolution of life forms had occurred but driven by use and
Lamarck disuse of organs.

6 Thomas Malthus Population growth will always tend to outrun the food supply
English Economist and that betterment of humankind is impossible without strict
limits on reproduction.

6 Hugo de Vries Mutation caused speciation and hence called it saltation

(single step large mutation).

6 Hardy-Weinberg The frequency of occurrence of alleles of a gene or a locus is

supposed to remain fixed and even remain the same through
generations. The gene pool (total genes and their alleles in a
population) remains a constant. This is called genetic
equilibrium. Sum total of all the allelic frequencies is 1.

8 M.S. SWAMINATHAN The father of the Indian Green Revolution

Expert in genetics and plant breeding. He developed short-
duration high-yielding varieties of rice including scented
Basmati.
He developed of the concept of crop cafeteria, crop
scheduling, Lab-to-Land.
His collaboration with Norman Borlaug, culminated in the
‘Green Revolution’ through introduction of Mexican varieties of
wheat in India.
He was honoured with Padma Bhushan and recently Bharat
Ratna (2024)

8 Norman Borlaug The father of the Green Revolution

7 Greeks like Health was considered as a state of body and mind where
Hippocrates there was a balance of certain ‘humors’.

7 William Harvey The discovery of blood circulation

7 Mary Mallon She was a cook by profession and typhoid carrier who
“Typhoid Mary” continued to spread typhoid for several years through the food
she prepared.

8 Alexander Fleming Observed Ammensalism between Staphylococci (-) and

Penicilium notatum (0).
NOBEL PRIZE
(1945)
8 Ernest Chain and Established the full potential of Penicillin as antibiotics
Howard Florey extensively used to treat American soldiers wounded in
World War II.
NOBEL PRIZE(1945)

9 René Descartes the French philosopher, mathematician and biologist of

seventeenth century “Father of Modern Philosophy.”

9 Herbert Boyer In 1969, he performed studies on a couple of restriction

enzymes of the E. coli bacterium

9 Stanley Cohen Stanford scientist.

Cohen had been studying small ringlets of DNA called
plasmids and which floatnabout freely in the cytoplasm of
certain bacterial cells and replicate independently from the
coding strand of DNA.
Cohen had developed a method of removing these plasmids
from the cell and then reinserting them in other cells.

9 Stanley Cohen and Construction of first recombinant DNA

Herbert Boyer
in 1972 by isolating the antibiotic
resistance gene by cutting out a piece of DNA from a plasmid
which was responsible for conferring antibiotic resistance.

9 Bolivar and Rodriguez. Created the plasmid pBR322

10 Eli Lilly A pharmaceutical chemist founded the Eli Lilly and Company,
an American company thatprepared two DNA sequences in
1983 corresponding to A and B,chains of human insulin and
introduced them in plasmidsof E. coli to produce insulin
chains.

11 Ramdeo Misra Father of Ecology in India.

His research laid the foundations for understanding of tropical
communities &their succession, environmental responses of
plant populations &productivity and nutrient cycling in tropical
forest &grassland ecosystems. Misra formulated the first
postgraduate course in ecology in India.He was honoured with
the Fellowships of the Indian National Science Academy and
World Academy of Arts and Science, and the prestigious
Sanjay Gandhi Award in Environment and Ecology. Due to his
efforts, the Government of India established the National
Committee for Environmental Planning and Coordination
(1972) which, in later years, paved the way for the
establishment of the Ministry of Environment &Forests (1984).
 SCIENTIST CONTRIBUTION
11 Verhulst & Pearl Logistic Growth

11 Connell He carried out elegant field experiments which showed that on

the rocky sea coasts of Scotland, the larger and competitively
superior barnacle Balanus dominates the intertidal area, and
excludes the smaller barnacle Chathamalus from that zone ie.
‘competitive release’

11 Gause ‘Competitive Exclusion Principle’ states that two closely related

species competing for the same resources cannot co-exist
indefinitely and the competitively inferior one will be eliminated
eventually.

11 MacArthur five closely related species of warblers living on the same tree
were able to avoid competition and co-exist due to behavioural
differences in their foraging activities ie. ‘resource partitioning’.

12 Lindemann 10% law – only 10 per cent of the energy is transferred

to each trophic level from the lower trophic level.
(1942)
13 Edward Wilson Coined term biodiversity
(Biologist)

13 Robert May Estimated global Biodiversity at about 7 million

13 Alexander Von Species area relationship

Humboldt
During his pioneering and extensive explorations in the
(German Naturalist & wilderness of South American jungles, he observed that
geographer) within a region species richness increased with increasing
explored area, but only up to a limit.

13 David Tilman David Tilman’s long term experiment using outdoor plots .
Species diversity is inversely proportional to year to year
variation in total biomass. Increased diversity contributed to
higher productivity

13 Paul Ehrlich Rivet popper hypothesis.

(Stanford ecologist) Key species concept in ecosystem.