Erwin Baur was a German geneticist

Geneticist

A geneticist is a biologist who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a researcher or lecturer. Some geneticists perform experiments and analyze data to interpret the inheritance of skills. A geneticist is also a Consultant or...

 and botanist. Baur worked primarily on plant genetics

Genetics

Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....

. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Breeding Research (since 1938 Erwin Baur-Institute). Baur is considered to be the father of plant virology

Virology

Virology is the study of viruses and virus-like agents: their structure, classification and evolution, their ways to infect and exploit cells for virus reproduction, the diseases they cause, the techniques to isolate and culture them, and their use in research and therapy...

. He discovered the inheritance of plastid

Plastid

Plastids are major organelles found in the cells of plants and algae. Plastids are the site of manufacture and storage of important chemical compounds used by the cell...

s.

In 1908 Baur demonstrated a lethal gene in the Antirrhinum plant. In 1909 working on the chloroplast

Chloroplast

Chloroplasts are organelles found in plant cells and other eukaryotic organisms that conduct photosynthesis. Chloroplasts capture light energy to conserve free energy in the form of ATP and reduce NADP to NADPH through a complex set of processes called photosynthesis.Chloroplasts are green...

 genes in Pelarganium (geraniums) he showed that they violated four of Mendel

Gregor Mendel

Gregor Johann Mendel was an Austrian scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance...

's five laws.
Baur stated that

1. plastids are carriers of hereditary factors which are able to mutate.
2. in variegated plants, random sorting out of plastids is taking place.
3. the genetic results indicate a biparental inheritance of plastids by egg cells and sperm cells in pelargonium.

Since the 1930s and the work of Otto Renner

Otto Renner

Otto Renner FRS was a German plant geneticist. Following the work of Erwin Baur, Renner established the theory of maternal plastid inheritance as a widely accepted genetic theory.Renner worked with plants from the genera Oenothera....

, plastid inheritance became a widely accepted genetic theory.

In 1921 and 1932 Baur co-authored with Fritz Lenz

Fritz Lenz

Fritz A Lenz was a German geneticist, member of the Nazi party, and influential specialist in "racial hygiene" during the Third Reich, one of the leading German theorists of "scientific racism" which legitimized the Nazi racial policies, starting with the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.- Biography...

 and Eugen Fischer

Eugen Fischer

Eugen Fischer was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics between 1927 and 1942...

 two volumes that became the book Human Heredity, which was a major influence on the racial theories of Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

. The work served a chief inspiration for biological support in Hitler's "Mein Kampf

Mein Kampf

Mein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...

".

External links

• Short Biography, bibliography, and links on digitized sources in the Virtual Laboratory
  Virtual Laboratory
  The online project Virtual Laboratory. Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life, 1830-1930, located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, is dedicated to research in the history of the experimentalization of life...
  
   of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin was established in March 1994. Its research is primarily devoted to a theoretically oriented history of science, principally of the natural sciences, but with methodological perspectives drawn from the cognitive sciences and from...