Charles Darwin and other great men in correspondence with Carl Wilhelm von Naegeli

The great Swiss-German botanist Carl Wilhelm von Naegeli (1817-1891) was a student of Lorenz Oken, A.P. de Candolle, and Matthias Jacob Schleiden and became a key figure in "genetic" (i.e., evolutionary-developmental) biology in the mid-late 19th century. He was an expert on the hawk-weed, Hieracium and also made important contributions to microbiology. One of his many outstanding students was Carl Correns, one of the 3 rediscoverers of Mendel's work. Naegeli was an early proponent and defender of Darwin. The correspondence preserved in the Naegeli family contains many important letters between Naegeli and his contemporaries. Those from Mendel to Naegeli have passed out of the Naegeli family and were published by Correns earlier in the century. However, exceptionally notable items still in the archives of the Naegeli family include 4 surviving letters from Darwin, 2 letters from Virchow, and 10 from Justus von Liebig. In spite of a lack of appreciation of Mendel's work, we call attention to the importance of those surviving documents from an era in which very few of the greatest naturalists and founders of modern biology--including Goethe, Darwin, Galton, Agassiz, von Humboldt, von Baer--were without "blind spots."