Evolution People

Early thinkers:
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E): Greek philosopher; first known serious observer of natural history
Nicholas Steno (1638-1686): Danish pioneer in anatomy and geology; argued that fossils were
the remains of once-living organisms; established basic rules of stratigraphy.
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778): developed first comprehensive system of taxonomy; encouraged
exploration in search of new species
Georges Buffon (1707-1788): French natural historian; speculated on possibility of common
ancestry; pioneer in study of natural history
Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802): proposed concept of evolution; grandfather of Charles
Geologists:
James Hutton (1726-1797): proposed uniformitarianism in geology; Lyell’s Principles of
Charles Lyell (1797-1875) Geology was a major influence on Darwin; Lyell was also Darwin’s
friend and mentor.
William Smith (1769-1839): English engineer and surveyor; worked out fossil strata in Britain;
discovered principle of faunal succession.
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832): French scientist; determined that fossils were the remains of
organisms; established reality of extinction; mapped fossil strata
in France; opposed ideas of evolution.
Early 19th –century evolutionists:
Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744-1829): first well-developed concept of evolution
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844): proposed evolution by direct effect of environment;
argued for unity of life; famous debate with Cuvier.

Morphologists:
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832): founder of comparative anatomy; expanded Linnaeus’ work
on taxonomy; laid groundwork for much of modern biology.
Richard Owen (1804-1892): English physician and comparative anatomist; first suggested
concept of homology; much work on fossils; early colleague of
Darwin but bitterly opposed Darwin’s ideas on evolution.
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Charles Darwin (1809-1882): first conceived of natural selection; convinced scientific
community of the facts of evolution and common ancestry.
Alfred Russell Wallace (1823-1913): independently discovered natural selection; contributed to
early ideas on biogeography.
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834): economist; wrote on tendency of populations to outgrow their
food supplies.
William Paley (1743-1805): natural theologian; proponent of argument from design for
existence of God (Watchmaker analogy); influenced Darwin.
Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1896): German embryologist; worked out laws of embryonic
development (precursor to modern science); critic of Darwin.
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919): German embryologist; proposed recapitulation theory (now
discredited); originated many biological concepts; supporter of
Darwin but differed from Darwin in the details of his ideas.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903): coined phrase “survival of the fittest”; early proponent of
so-called “Social Darwinism”.
Thomas Huxley (1825-1895): “Darwin’s Bulldog”; early defender of evolution.
Non-Darwinian evolutionists:
Henry Fairfield Osborne (1857-1935): paleontologist; proponent of orthogenesis
Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945): founder of modern genetics; proponent of mutation
theory.

The New Synthesis:
Ronald A. Fisher (1890-1962): population geneticist; founder of modern statistics; showed how
natural selection acts in context of Mendelian genetics.
J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964): population geneticist; contributed to development of field.
Sewall Wright (1889-1988): population geneticist; first conceived of genetic drift; created
many models for evolution at the population level.
Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975): studied natural selection in the wild using Drosophila.
Ernst Mayr (1904-2005): systematist; early proponent of modern ideas on speciation; described
philosophy of evolutionary biology.
G. Ledyard Stebbins (1906-2000): incorporated botany into the New Synthesis.
George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984): paleontologist; examined rates of evolutionary change
in the fossil record; harmonized paleontology with the New
Synthesis.