Evolutionary Synthesis

Ernst Mayr was Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Emeritus, at Harvard University. He was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards, including the Crafoord Prize for Biology, the National Medal of Science, the Balzan Prize, and the Japan Prize. William B. Provine is Professor of the History of Biology and Charles A. Alexander Professor of Biological Sciences at Cornell University. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1988 he won Cornell’s Clark Distinguished Teaching Award.

If you want to know how genetics and evolutionary biology were forged into a monolithic Darwinian whole, then read The Evolutionary Synthesis. These reissued transcripts date from a conference in 1974, when many of the architects of the synthesis were still around to present their own personal recollections.

• Preface, 1998 Preface to the Original Edition Prologue: Some Thoughts on the History of the Evolutionary Synthesis Ernst Mayr Part One: Different Biological Disciplines and the Synthesis Genetics Introduction William B. Provine Theoretical Population Genetics in the Evolutionary Synthesis Richard C. Lewontin Cytology Introduction William B. Provine The Evolution of Genetic Systems: Contributions of Cytology to Evolutionary Theory C.D. Darlington Cytology in the T.H. Morgan School Alexander Weinstein Cytogenetics and the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis Hampton L. Carson Embryology Introduction William B. Provine Embryology and the Modern Synthesis in Evolutionary Theory Viktor Hamburger The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis and the Biogenetic Law Frederick B. Churchill Systematics The Role of Systematics in the Evolutionary Synthesis Ernst Mayr Botany Introduction Ernst Mayr Botany and the Synthetic Theory of Evolution G. Ledyard Stebbins Paleontology Introduction Ernst Mayr G.G. Simpson, Paleontology, and the Modern Synthesis Stephen Jay Gould Morphology Introduction Ernst Mayr Morphology in the Evolutionary Synthesis William Coleman The Failure of Morphology to Assimilate Darwinism Michael T. Ghiselin Severtsov and Schmalhausen: Russian Morphology and the Evolutionary Synthesis Mark B. Adams Part Two: The Synthesis in Different Countries Soviet Union The Birth of the Genetic Theory of Evolution in the Soviet Union in the 1920s Theodosius Dobzhansky Sergei Chetverikov, the Kol'tsov Institute, and the Evolutionary Synthesis Mark B. Adams Germany Introduction Ernst Mayr Historical Development of the Present Synthetic Neo-Darwinism in Germany Bernhard Rensch Evolutionary Theory in Germany: A Comment Viktor Hamburger France Introduction Ernst Mayr Evolutionary Biology in France at the Time of the Evolutionary Synthesis Ernest Boesiger The Arrival of Neo-Darwinism in France Ernst Mayr A Second Glance at Evolutionary Biology in France Camille Limoges England Introduction William B. Provine Some Recollections Pertaining to the Evolutionary Synthesis E.B. Ford Lamarckism in Britain and the United States Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr. A Note on W.L. Tower's Leptinotarsa Work Alexander Weinstein United States Introduction William B. Provine The Evolutionary Synthesis: Morgan and Natural Selection Revisited Garland E. Allen Hypotheses That Blur and Grow Hampton L. Carson Part Three: Final Considerations Interpretive Issues in the Evolutionary Synthesis Introduction William B. Provine The Meaning of the Evolutionary Synthesis Dudley Shapere Epilogue William B. Provine Biographical Essays How I Became a Darwinian Ernst Mayr Curt Stem Ernst Mayr J.B.S. Haldane, R.A. Fisher, and William Bateson C.D. Darlington Morgan and the Theory of Natural Selection Alexander Weinstein Morgan and His School in the 1930s Theodosius Dobzhansky G.G. Simpson Ernst Mayr Contributors Conference Participants Index