The Gene: An Intimate HistorySpanning the globe and several centuries, The Gene is the story of the quest to decipher the master code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function. The story of the gene begins in an obscure Augustinian abbey in Moravia in 1856, where a monk stumbles on the idea of a unit of heredity . It intersects with Darwin s theory of evolution, and collides with the horrors of Nazi eugenics in the 1940s. The gene transforms post war