Edmund Beecher Wilson - Sutton and Boveri

Sutton and Boveri

In 1902 and 1903 Walter Sutton suggested that chromosomes, which segregate in a Mendelian fashion, are hereditary units: "I may finally call attention to the probability that the association of paternal and maternal chromosomes in pairs and their subsequent separation during the reducing division ... may constitute the physical basis of the Mendelian law of heredity". Wilson, who was Sutton's teacher and Boveri's friend, called this the "Sutton-Boveri Theory".

1902–1904: Theodor Heinrich Boveri (1862–1915), a German biologist, made several important contributions to chromosome theory in a series of papers, finally stating in 1904 that he had seen the link between chromosomes and Mendel's results in 1902 (although this is not documented in his publications). He said that chromosomes were "independent entities which retain their independence even in the resting nucleus... What comes out of the nucleus is what goes into it".