Hugo De Vries (1848-1935), Dutch botanist and geneticist, is the author of the mutation theory of evolution. His work led to the rediscovery and establishment of Mendel's laws.

Hugo de Vries was born on Feb. 16, 1848, in Haarlem. His father, Gerrit De Vries, had been prime minister of the Netherlands and came from a family of Baptist ministers and businessmen.. His mother, Maria Everardina Reuvens, came from an ancestry of scholars and statesmen. Educated first at a private Baptist school in Haarlem, young De Vries attended gymnasium (or highschool) in the Hague, matriculating to the University of Leiden in 1866. Here, he read two works that greatly stimulated his interest in botany: Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and Julius Sachs' Textbook of Botany (1868). The first book raised De Vries' curiosity about variation and its relationship to the process of evolution, particularly the diversification of species. The latter publication aroused De Vries'...