Word: darwin
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...Harvard scientist and three other researchers yesterday released evidence supporting the theory of gradual evolution first expounded by Charles Darwin and T.H. Huxley...
Somehow. Mendel and Darwin joined forces. By 1950, their ideas were assimilated into a "modern synthesis." as Julian Huxley called...
Ernst Mayr, Alexander Agassiz professor of Zoology emeritus, was one of the architects of this synthesis. His Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942) marked the climax of nearly three decades of work that spanned scientific disciplines and attacked the major problem left unsolved by Darwin, the origin of variation of physical features and traits among species. He and William B. Provine have outlined the development of this intellectual trend in a new book. The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, published by the Harvard University Press...
...Darwin based his theory of natural selection on the existence of this unexplained variation. He claimed varieties that were more "fit' had an advantage in competition for survival and production of offspring. However cogent his "survival-of-the fittest" theory, it was incomplete without an adequate explanation of the cause for variation...
Mendel's studies on the inheritance of physical characteristics provided the missing link for Darwin's evolutionary theory. The synthesis of their ideas required the remarkable imagination and brashness of such scientists as Wright, Haldane, Fisher, Chetverikov, Mayr, Simpson, Dobzhansky, Jepsen and others working in population genetics, systematics, cytology, and paleontology...