Tag: modern evolutionary synthesis
-
J.B.S. Haldane Biography: Rebel of Modern Genetics
One way to begin a J.B.S. Haldane biography is in a muddy trench on the Western Front. A young British officer, already famous in his regiment for a reckless courage that bordered on suicidal, peered over the lip of the trench to test how close enemy bullets came to his skull. He logged the results in a…
-
Ernst Mayr biography: Darwin’s 20th-Century Heir
To tell an Ernst Mayr biography is to trace the arc of a century in which biology reinvented itself. When he was born in 1904, evolution was still a contested idea and genetics a young science; by the time he died, in 2005, evolutionary biology had become a mature discipline with its own theories, institutions and public…