Q 01/05

Which shape did James Watson and Francis Crick propose for the structure of DNA in 1953?

A) Triple helix

B) Double helix

C) Single helix

D) Pleated sheet

Answer · why

B) Double helix

Double helix: months earlier Linus Pauling had proposed a triple helix for DNA, a model he soon saw was built inside out with the wrong number of stra...

Q 02/05

Gregor Mendel belonged to which religious order?

A) Jesuits

B) Benedictines

C) Augustinians

D) Franciscans

Answer · why

C) Augustinians

Augustinians: Mendel joined their St Thomas's Abbey in Brno, and once he became abbot in 1868 his administrative duties largely ended his experiments.

Q 03/05

Roughly how many plants did Mendel cultivate and test between 1856 and 1863?

A) 280

B) 2,800

C) 28,000

D) 280,000

Answer · why

C) 28,000

28,000: most were garden peas, and when Mendel later tried hawkweed his results would not repeat, because hawkweed's seeds grow into clones of the mot...

Q 04/05

Which naturalist died in 1882 without ever reading Gregor Mendel's work on pea hybrids?

A) Carl Nägeli

B) Charles Darwin

C) Hugo de Vries

D) Carl Correns

Answer · why

B) Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was unaware of Mendel's paper and tried instead to explain heredity with his own theory, pangenesis, which never worked out.

Q 05/05

Who coined the word 'genetics' for the study of heredity?

A) Francis Galton

B) William Bateson

C) August Weismann

D) Ernst Haeckel

Answer · why

B) William Bateson

William Bateson championed Mendel's rediscovered laws so fiercely against rivals such as W. F. R. Weldon that he was nicknamed 'Mendel's bulldog'.