1859 - Charles Darwin publishes The Origin of Species, supporting his theory of the natural selection.
1866 - Gregor Mendel publishes his job on pea plants, showing hereditary characteristics.
1869 - DNA is isolated from the cells for the first time by Frederick Mieascher.
1879 - Walter Flemming describes the behavior of chromosomes during cell division (mitosis).
1900 - Carl Correns, Hugo de Vries, and Erich von Tschermak rediscover Mendel's work. Abstract ideas of Mendel are proven.
1902 - Walter Sutton relates Mendel's work with the chromosome division (meiosis).
1911 - Thomas Morgan shows that chromosomes carry genes.
1945 - William Astbury shows that the DNA has a regular periodic structure.
1952 - Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase show that the genes are made of DNA.
1975 - Frederick Sanger, Alan Maxam and Walter Gilbert develop different techniques of DNA sequencing.
1990 - Launch of The Human Genome Project with the purpose of sequencing the human DNA.
2003 - Completition of The Human Genome Project.
Source: Genetic Timeline