When the Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer was found dead, a gun
by his side, in September 1926, the reason for his despair
seemed obvious. For years there had been rumours that he was a
fraud, and a few weeks earlier a leading researcher hinted at
proof that Kammerer had invented data to support his crazy ideas
about evolution. While his obituaries tried to put a positive
gloss on the debacle, many scientists believed his death proved
his guilt, and his name was quickly forgotten by all but a few
historians. But now the story of Kammerer has taken a dramatic
new twist, following research suggesting that his "fraudulent"
work was a major breakthrough decades ahead of its time. If
confirmed, Kammerer will be seen as one of the pioneers of
evolution theory, alongside the likes of Darwin himself. At the
time he performed his notorious experiments, biologists were
just beginning to combine Darwin's theory of evolution with the
idea of inheritance of traits via genes. No one had any idea
what genes actually were, b