Introduction
Chronology of EvolutionBarbara W. Heavers and Judith K.
Wood
- 345 B.P.
- Plato's Theory of Forms said all life forms represent an imperfect
replica of a perfect heavenly model.
- 1749
- G. L. Buffon's Histoire Naturelle implied or overtly assumed organic
evolution.
- 1798
- T. R. Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population, as It
Affects the Future Improvement of Society rejected the idea that in
animals some of the offspring will possess the desirable qualities of
the parents in a greater degree.
- 1800
- Erasmus Darwin's Zoonomia attempted to explain organic life
according to evolutionary principles.
- 1809
- Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's Philosophie Zoologique presented a
comprehensive theory of transformism. Charles Darwin was born.
- 1830
- First volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology interprets
earth history as a process of gradual change.
- 1831
- Darwin leaves England on H.M.S. Beagle, embarking on a five-year
voyage of discovery.
- 1848
- Asa Gray published Manual of the Botany of the Northern United
States and founded systematic botany in the U.S. He later became
Darwin's chief advocate in the U.S.
- 1858
- Alfred R. Wallace proposed in a letter to C. Darwin a theory of
evolution by means of natural selection based on his work in Indonesia.
The two agreed to present their papers on the same occasion to the
Linnean Society.
- 1859
- Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species; or, The
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
- 1863
- Thomas Henry Huxley's Man's Place in Nature stressed the
similarities between humans and apes.
- 1863
- Lyell's Antiquity of Man popularized the belief that the human race
is much older than allowed by the biblical time scale.
- 1866
- Ernst Haeckel's Generelle Morphologie advocated a radically
materialist interpretation of progressive evolution. Gregor Mendel
published the results of his investigations of the inheritance of
"factors" in pea plants.
- 1871
- Charles Darwin published The Descent of Man and Selection in
Relation to Sex.
- 1882
- Darwin died and was buried in Westminster Abbey next to Sir Isaac
Newton.
- 1893
- August Weismann's The Germ Plasm stressed the role of "hard"
heredity and precipitated a debate on Lamarckism.
- 1900
- Correns, Tschermak and De Vries rediscovered Gregor Mendel's laws of
heredity. Hugo De Vries went on to advocate evolution by sudden
"mutations."
- 1902
- W. Sutton pointed out the interrelationships between cytology and
Mendelism, closing the gap between cell morphology and heredity.
- 1908
- T. H. Morgan, the father of Drosophila genetics, discovered
sex-linked inheritance.
- G. H. Hardy and W. Weinberg recognized that evolutionary change is
not automatic, that it occurs only when something disturbs the genetic
equilibrium.
- 1912
- Alfred Wegener, a geophysicist proposed the theory of continental
drift and an earlier supercontinent called Pangaea, which split to form
the current continents.
- 1927
- H. J. Muller discovered that exposure to x-rays greatly increased
mutation rate.
- 1928
- Fred Griffith proposed that some unknown "principle" had transformed
the harmless R strain of Diplococcus to the virulent S strain.
- 1930
- Ronald Aylmer Fisher's Genetical Theory of Natural Selection
published.
- 1932
- J. B. S. Haldane's The Causes of Evolution suggested that altruistic
acts toward close relatives might favor the survival and spread of those
of the altruist's genes that are shared by relatives.
- 1937
- T. Dobzhansky, an architect of the evolutionary synthesis, published
Genetics and Origin of Species, which combined the best elements of both
genetics and systematics.
- 1942
- Ernst Mayr, another architect of the evolutionary synthesis,
published Systematics and the Origin of Species .
- 1944
- Julian Huxley's Evolution: The Modern Synthesis and George Gaylord
Simpson's Tempo and Mode in Evolution consolidated the synthesis of
Darwinism and genetics.
- O. Avery, M. McCarty, and C. MacLeod determined that DNA was the
substance that changed hereditary patterns in bacteria and must be the
heredity material.
- 1951
- Barbara McClintock published her hypothesis of transposable elements
to explain color variations in corn.
- 1953
- J. D. Watson and F. H. C. Crick published the structure for DNA in
Nature.
- 1957
- H.D. Kettlewell studied the peppered moth population in England and
observed that light-colored moths survived best on trees with healthy
lichens and dark-colored moths on lichens darkened by industrial
pollution. The result was a difference in the allelic frequencies of
dark and light moths in polluted and clean woods.
- 1966
- J. L. Hubby and R. C. Lewontin (Genetics 54:577-594) studied enzyme
genes in natural populations using the new method of electrophoresis.
- Jacob, Lwoff, and Monod shared the Nobel Prize for their discoveries
concerning the genetics of prokaryotes and the Operon theory.
- 1968
- J. D. Watson published The Double Helix , a history of the discovery
of the structure of DNA.
- F. J. Ayala in studies with Drosophila demonstrated that populations
with variation adapted twice as fast as uniform populations.
- 1971
- Kimura's Theoretical Aspects of Population Genetics placed him in
the neutralist school along with Lewontin on interpretations of
polymorphism.
- 1975
- Edward O. Wilson's Sociobiology precipitated a controversy over the
use of natural selection to explain human behavior.
- 1977
- In Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Stephen J. Gould, a co-developer of the
theory of punctuated equilibrium, says the fossil record does not
support gradualism. The theory provides an explanation of the gaps
existing in the fossil record.
- 1977
- T. Dobzhansky's Evolution provides a longer, more technical but
still conventional, up-to-date treatment of the synthetic theory.
- 1980
- Fredrich Sanger produced the first complete sequence of a genome in
a bacteriophage.
- 1985
- Kary Mullis invented the PCR (polymerase chain reaction), which
allows DNA to be synthesized for genetic engineering, forensics, and DNA
sequencing.
- 1990's
- The human genome project was begun.
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