Naudin, Charles

Born Aug. 14, 1815, in Autun; died Mar. 19, 1899, in Antibes. French botanist who discovered the basic principles of heredity and anticipated the theories of artificial and natural selection. Member of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1863).

Beginning in 1842, Naudin worked at the museum of natural history in Paris. In 1876 he became head of the experimental orchard and laboratory at the Turet villa in Antibes. His principal work was on the origin of cultivated varieties of Cucurbitaceas Naudin’s numerous experiments in hybridization between 1854 to 1865 led to his discovery of the phenomena of the disjunction and combination of traits in the offspring of hybrids. Because he observed these phenomena predominantly in interspecific crossing, Naudin was not able to analyze precisely the inheritance of individual traits or to give a precise numerical analysis of their distribution in offspring. For his work, Naudin was awarded a prize by the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1862 and was widely acclaimed. However, a complete understanding of the laws of heredity did not result from his work but from the independent work of G. Mendel.