March 14, 1900

Rediscovery of Mendel's laws

De Vries's German paper on hybrid segregation is received for publication

The date under the paper is a journal receipt stamp, not a moment of discovery — and the version of de Vries's result that reached print first, twelve days later, did not mention Mendel at all.

A receipt stamp dated 14 March 1900

The journal of the German Botanical Society recorded 14 March 1900 as the receipt date for Hugo de Vries's manuscript "Das Spaltungsgesetz der Bastarde" — "The Law of Segregation of Hybrids". It ran in volume 18, pages 83–90.

In that manuscript de Vries stated two propositions about dominance and about the separation of antagonistic characters during pollen and egg formation, then acknowledged that Mendel had already stated their essentials for peas.

So 14 March is a manuscript-receipt date. It is neither the paper's publication date nor a documented date on which de Vries suddenly discovered Mendel's laws.

Two documents, twelve days apart, neither a discovery

The competing date is 26 March 1900, when de Vries's short French note "Sur la loi de disjonction des hybrides" appeared in the Comptes rendus of the Académie des Sciences, volume 130, pages 845–847. It did not name Mendel.

The two dates therefore belong to two different papers — the longer German one that credited Mendel and the shorter French one that did not. Sources also disagree on when the German paper itself was actually printed, cataloguing it variously in late March or April.

De Vries's own German footnote claimed he encountered Mendel only after most of his experiments were finished, a claim historians have spent decades testing.

The priority race the notes set off

The French note set out de Vries's segregation claim — that antagonistic characters separate during the formation of pollen and egg cells — without naming Mendel, and it was the first version of the result to reach print.

Correns published his own results rapidly after reading de Vries, emphasizing Mendel's priority; Tschermak published pea-crossing work later in 1900.

"Rediscovery by de Vries, Correns and Tschermak" is a traditional shorthand rather than an uncontested account of three independent, simultaneous discoveries — historians dispute the chronology, the independence, and even Tschermak's standing as a rediscoverer.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes Date disputed

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.

What the sources leave uncertain

The date itself is secure as the German journal’s receipt date. Calling it the day de Vries “rediscovered” Mendel is not supported by a dated discovery record.
Sources disagree on the German paper’s exact print date—cataloging it variously in late March or April—but agree that March 14 was receipt rather than publication.
Historians dispute whether de Vries independently derived Mendelian segregation before reading Mendel, how much his terminology changed afterward, and whether the traditional three-way “independent rediscovery” story is accurate.