The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis formalizes the role of variation, heredity, differential reproduction, and mutation in population genetics. Here we explore a mathematical structure, based on the ...

The first public lecture I attended as a new graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1965 was by the evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin, who died on July 4 at age 92. Its subject was ...

Ironically, one great unsolved problem in Darwin's master work, On the Origin of Species, was just that: How and why do species originate? Darwin and his later followers were faced with a seeming ...

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution generated scientific debate and discussion not only in Darwin's own time, but for decades afterward. In the latter part of the nineteenth century and the until the ...

The question of how human societies evolve from small groups to the huge, anonymous and complex societies of today has been answered mathematically, accurately matching the historical record on the ...

Prior to Charles Darwin, many scholars, including Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin, believed that organisms evolved over time, becoming more complex and better suited to their environment. But the ...

This volume is based on the National Academy of Sciences′ Colloquium on the Variation and Evolution in Plants and Microorganisms: Toward a New Synthesis 50 Years after Stebbins. The articles appearing ...

Expanding the modern synthesis requires elevating the role of interaction within and across various biological scales to the status of an evolutionary principle. One way to do this is to characterize ...

On the 31st of May, 1984, the late evolutionary theorist John Maynard Smith appraised the field of paleontology in the journal Nature. The report was a critical summary of a series of lectures Stephen ...

The interaction between 'transfer RNAs' and the enzymes that help them in protein synthesis has always been the key area of interest for understanding the evolution of the genetic code. Now, a team of ...

Scientific naturalism -- Darwin's Scottish enlightenment -- Mendelian ratios -- Modern evolutionary synthesis -- Scottish geology -- Rocky grounds -- Beagle voyage ...