Luther Burbank: honorary member of the American Breeders' Association.

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) was once widely acclaimed to be America’s most famous horticulturist and plant breeder. Today, however, his name may not be recognized by many in the general public. I found that he is also unknown to even some academic horticulturists whose formal coursework apparently did not include a history of their discipline. To those scientists who know something of him, he is often viewed as a tyro and/or a charlatan. Even highly respected modern plant-breeding books fail to mention his name (e.g., Allard 1960). His life s work straddled the post-Darwinian period and nearly three decades into the 20th century. During this era, Francis Galton initiated eugenics studies, August Weismann asserted that there is no connection between the germ plasm and the somatoplasm (thus rendering the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics untenable), Hugo de Vries proposed that mutations were the basis of rapid species formation, and Gregor Mendel formulated some basic laws of heredity. Burbank embraced eugenics but rejected Weismannism, the mutation theory of de Vries, and the gene concept of Mendel. Instead, he clung to the theory of the ‘‘inheritance of acquired characteristics,’’ an ancient notion popularized in 1809 in a book by the French naturalist J. B. Lamarck (1744–1829). Burbank claimed that his success as a plant breeder rested firmly on Darwinian principles. In his book On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin resorted to the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics because it was the only explanation for heredity at the time. Lamarck did not explain how the effects of changed environments could result in heritable adaptive changes in organisms, so Darwin resurrected an old theory he called ‘‘pangenesis’’ in his 1868 book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. Cells in various parts of the body released hereditary particles (Darwin called them ‘‘gemmules’’) that found their way to the reproductive cells (eggs and sperms). During the development of progeny from the fertilized egg, each gemmule would guide the formation of the part of the body from which it was derived. Thus, it might be possible that environmental modifications of the traits of parents could become heritable (capable of being transmitted to offspring). Burbank retained his belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics even after the discovery of Mendel’s paper in 1900 and throughout the rest of his life. At the opening meeting of the American Breeders’ Association (ABA) at St. Louis in 1903, Burbank was unanimously elected to honorary membership. In the early proceedings of the association, a number of articles by him appeared under the titles ‘‘Heredity,’’ ‘‘Right Attitude Toward Life,’’ ‘‘Another Mode of Species Forming,’’ and ‘‘Evolution and Variation with the Fundamental Significance of Sex.’’ So why was Burbank held in such high regard in the early days of genetics? What happened to his reputation in his later years? And whatever became of the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics?