National traditions and the emergence of genetics: the French example

After the 'rediscovery' of Mendel in 1900, Mendelian approaches to heredity were controversial. In France, however, resistance to Mendelism was especially strong and genetics only began to be institutionalized there after 1945. Nonetheless, extrauniversity research programmes in population and physiological genetics, which began after 1930, led to the rapid growth of genetic research after the Second World War, especially in regulatory genetics. We show that this rapid, but delayed, growth of genetic research was based on distinctively French traditions.