In Retrospect: The chromosome trail

Abstract

A new translation of Theodor Boveri's 1914 monograph brings the early origins of contemporary cancer research to a wider readership, contends Robert A. Weinberg. The German biologist Theodor Boveri (1862–1915) theorized that a tumour could develop from a single cell with damaged chromosomes long before the idea became generally accepted. His other achievements included an early confirmation that the seat of heredity lay in the nucleus, not in the cytoplasm, and the discovery of the centrosome. Robert Weinberg welcomes a new translation of Boveri's monograph of 1914, Zur Frage der Entstehung maligner Tumoren, as a fitting tribute to Boveri's work, but also as a good read for biologists interested in finding out how we got to where we are today.