Origin of Term
The term was adapted in 1920 by Hans Winkler, professor of botany at the University of Hamburg, Germany. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the name to be a blend of the words gene and chromosome. A few related -ome words already existed, such as biome and rhizome, forming a vocabulary into which genome fits systematically.
Read more about this topic: Genome
Famous quotes containing the words origin and/or term:
“The origin of storms is not in clouds,
our lightning strikes when the earth rises,
spillways free authentic power:
dead John Brown’s body walking from a tunnel
to break the armored and concluded mind.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky knolwedge, Grammatica parda, tawny grammar, a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)