Abstract
Genetics is the study of heredity and variation among organisms. The initial breakthroughs in genetics came with observations made by Darwin and Mendel in the 19th century, and mathematics came to play an important role in bringing us to our present-day understanding of genetics. Work in the first half of the 20th century by J.B.S. Haldane, S. Wright, R.A. Fisher, and others put this important area of biology on a firm mathematical base that helped in the design and interpretation of experiments. Many think that genetics still represents the outstanding application of mathematics in the life sciences.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Annotated References
H.F. Judson, The eighth day of creation, Simon and Shuster, New York, 1979. An interesting review of how the science of genetics developed and is used.
J.F. Crow, and M.Kimura, An introduction to population genetics, Harper & Row, New York, 1970. A useful resource in population genetics.
W. Feller, An introduction to the theory of probability and its applications, J. Wiley-Interscience, New York, 1966. One of the most important texts in probability. It is a reliable reference for the random sampling processes discussed here.
R. Novick, and F. C. Hoppensteadt, On plasmid incompatibility, Plasmid, 1 (1978) 421–434.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hoppensteadt, F.C., Peskin, C.S. (1992). Inheritance. In: Mathematics in Medicine and the Life Sciences. Texts in Applied Mathematics, vol 10. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4131-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-4131-5_3
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-4133-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-4131-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive