Conrad Hal Waddington (1905-1975) : el naixement de l'epigenètica Authors José Luis Paternain Suberviola Maria Cabré Bargalló Miguel Ángel Montero i Simó Antoni Romeu Figuerola Abstract Waddington was an active investigator as an embryologist and genetist from the 1930s to 1950s. Over this period he did a brilliant work in theoretical biology developing concepts such as «genetic assimilation» and «epigenetic landscape ».Waddingtons epigenetic landscape is a metaphor for how gene regulation modulates development. This idea was actually based on experiment: Waddington found that one effect of mutation was to affect how cells differentiated. In the studies of development,Waddington speculated on the meaning of the «epigenetic landscape» as reflected in his works Organisers and Genes (1940) and The strategy of the Genes (1957). Waddington describes epigenetics as the causal analysis of development, in other words, all those mechanisms (genetics and environmental) necessary to activate the genetic program of development. Downloads Text complet (Català) Published 2010-04-29 Issue Nova època, vol. 2 (2) : 2009 Section Articles License The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors.On submitting articles for publication to the journal Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, authors accept the following terms:Authors assign to Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica.Authors answer to Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT) for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.SCHCT declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.