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 of, origin and/or term:
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Most literature on the culture of adolescence focuses on peer pressure as a negative force. Warnings about the “wrong crowd” read like tornado alerts in parent manuals. . . . It is a relative term that means different things in different places. In Fort Wayne, for example, the wrong crowd meant hanging out with liberal Democrats. In Connecticut, it meant kids who weren’t planning to get a Ph.D. from Yale.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)