On S.N. Bernstein's derivation of Mendel's Law and 'rediscovery' of the Hardy-Weinberg distribution

Around 1923 the soon-to-be famous Soviet mathematician and probabilist Sergei N. Bernstein started to construct an axiomatic foundation of a theory of heredity. He began from the premise of stationarity (constancy of type proportions) from the first generation of offspring. This led him to derive th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGenetics and molecular biology Vol. 35; no. 2; pp. 388 - 394
Main Authors Stark, Alan, Seneta, Eugene
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Brazil Sociedade Brasileira de Genética 01.01.2012
Subjects
axiomatic foundations
Bernstein
BIOCHEMISTRY & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
coefficients of heredity
GENETICS & HEREDITY
Hardy-Weinberg
Mendel
Review
Hardy-Weinberg
coefficients of heredity
Mendel
Bernstein
axiomatic foundations
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Summary:Around 1923 the soon-to-be famous Soviet mathematician and probabilist Sergei N. Bernstein started to construct an axiomatic foundation of a theory of heredity. He began from the premise of stationarity (constancy of type proportions) from the first generation of offspring. This led him to derive the Mendelian coefficients of heredity. It appears that he had no direct influence on the subsequent development of population genetics. A basic assumption of Bernstein was that parents coupled randomly to produce offspring. This paper shows that a simple model of non-random mating, which nevertheless embodies a feature of the Hardy-Weinberg Law, can produce Mendelian coefficients of heredity while maintaining the population distribution. How W. Johannsen's monograph influenced Bernstein is discussed.
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ISSN:1415-4757
1678-4685
1678-4685
DOI:10.1590/S1415-47572012005000025