ABSTRACT
At the British Association meeting in 1904 in Cambridge there was a fierce show down between the two schools of thought, between the Mendelian's versus the Biometrician's (called after Karl Pearson's journal Biometrika). The Pearson camp used the usual arguments against William Bateson and the Mendelians: There were often intermediate features found in many hybrid crosses that suggest blending inheritance as proposed by Charles Darwin, and there was the possibility that Mendelian results could be explained by other models than the one proposed by Gregor Mendel. Mendel's discovery of the gene has led in time to the vast development of modern genetics, opening up such practical issues as medical therapeutics, gene therapy, personalized medicine, designer babies, and DNA fingerprints to provide unique identification of a person for legal or civil inquiries, improved agricultural crops, and improved industrial products. Mendel discovered the gene by growing peas. Growing rice is another staple food crop especially for Asian populations.
