100 years on: a century of genetics

Abstract

In 2006 we celebrated the centenary of a remarkable year that saw the birth of genetics as a scientific discipline. This birth had its origins in horticulture and was supervised by a remarkable Cambridge academic, accompanied by a loyal group of female colleagues who worked together in underfunded conditions with little institutional support. Despite this deprivation, they established the foundations of an ongoing revolution, with huge academic and commercial consequences that we can recognize today in the shape of genomics and its application to biomedicine.