Talk:William Jasper Spillman

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"Impact" section[edit]

This is a paragraph with no sources. And does the phrase "Spillman drew devoted crowds of students to his classes" seem appropriate? How can such a claim be measured a hundred years later? Browntable (talk) 19:57, 9 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rediscovery of Mendel's Laws?[edit]

This article credits Spillman with "being the only American to independently rediscover Mendel's laws of genetics." This does not seem accurate to me. The reference cited (6) in fact does not support this claim. The author, LPV Johnson says, "We must not claim for Spillman the independent discovery of the mendelian laws of heredity; he fell short of that." The same article quotes Spillman himself saying, in 1909, "The writer claims only to have discovered the fact that in the second generation of a hybrid every possible combination of the original parent character occurs. He did not discover the law of dominance or the fact that in the second generation, in addition to all the possible combinations of parent characters, there also occurs every possible hybrid between these combinations. Mendel was the first to discover all these things, including the law of recombination."

I think the claim of rediscovery of Mendel's laws should be amended to something more accurate, and perhaps a section on Spillman's genetic studies be created. I am interested to hear other perspectives on this.Michaplot (talk) 18:46, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]