The dominance of English in science can obscure the contribution of other languages to modern scientific terminology. At first sight it may seem that German has made only a minor contribution, cropping up only in niche areas of biology (e.g. the morphological Bauplan or the Dauer larva of worm genetics). So it’s striking that a word as familiar as “genome” owes its origin to the German language. “Genom” was coined by Hans Winkler in his 1920 book “Verbreitung und Ursache der Parthenogenesis im Pflanzen- und Tierreiche”. Surprisingly, “genome” got off to a shaky start and took a few decades to catch on. The prevalence of “genome” today is something that would have irritated Theodosius Dobzhansky, the legendary evolutionary biologist, who disliked “Genom” preferring instead “set of chromosomes”. Dobzhansky might have consoled himself at the extinction of his favoured term by extending his famous insight “nothing makes sense except in the light of evolution” to the field of language use.

Reference:
Lederberg, J., McCray, A.T. ‘Ome sweet ‘omics: — A genealogical treasury of words. The Scientist 2001; 15(7): 8.