Chromosome Theory of Inheritance

The chromosome theory of inheritance is the theory that genes are located on chromosomes within the cell nucleus and that the inheritance patterns Gregor Mendel had described could be explained by the physical behavior of chromosomes during cell division. Walter Sutton and Theodor Boveri independently proposed the theory around 1902 after observing that chromosomes separate and combine during meiosis and fertilization in a manner parallel to Mendel's abstract hereditary factors. Thomas Hunt Morgan's subsequent experimental work on fruit flies in the 1910s, which located specific genes to specific chromosomes and demonstrated genetic linkage, provided the decisive confirming evidence, work for which Morgan received the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.