binomial law

Main Entry: Har·dy–Wein·berg law
Pronunciation: "härd-E-'wIn-"b&rg-
Function: noun
: a fundamental principle of populationgenetics that is approximately true for small populations and holds with increasing exactness for larger and larger populations: population gene frequencies and population genotype frequencies remainconstant from generation to generation if mating is random and if mutation, selection, immigration, and emigration do not occur called also Hardy-Weinberg principle
Hardy, GodfreyHarold (1877–1947), British mathematician. In his time Hardy was probably the leading pure mathematician in Great Britain. In 1908 he published a paper formulating the law ofpopulation genetics that the frequencies of both the different kinds of genes and of the different kinds of genotypes which they produce tend to remain constant over generations in large populationsunder general conditions.
Weináberg /'vIn-berk/, Wilhelm (1862–1937), German physician and geneticist. Weinberg made important contributions in medicine andhuman genetics to the study of multiple births, population genetics, and medical statistics. He ranks as one of the founders of population genetics. Independently of Hardy and at about the same time,he discovered the law of population genetics that is now called the Hardy-Weinberg law after both of them. In his studies of population genetics, Weinberg took into account both genetic andenvironmental factors. He was the first geneticist to partition the total variance of phenotypes into genetic and environmental portions.

Hardy-Weinberg law Hardy-Wein·berg law (-wīn'bərg)
n.
A fundamental principle in population genetics stating that the genotype frequencies and gene frequencies of a large, randomly mating population remain constant provided immigration, mutation, and selection do not take place.

Hardy-Weinberg law   (här'dē-wīn'bûrg)  Pronunciation Key  A fundamental principle in population genetics stating that the genotype frequencies and gene frequencies of a large, randomly mating population remain constant provided immigration, mutation, and selection do not take place. In the simple case of a chromosome locus with two alleles, A and a, with frequencies p and q respectively, the frequency of the homozygotic genotype AA under random mating will be p2, of heterozygotic Aa will be 2pq, and of homozygotic aa will be q2. The law is named for its formulators, British mathematician Godfrey Harold Hardy (1877-1947) and German physician Wilhelm Weinberg (1862-1937).