HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHTS

EVOLUTION of the THEORY OF EVOLUTION

CARL VON LINNE

Father of taxonomy

Born: May 23, 1707

1774: series of mild strokes

died in 1778

Linnaean Society of London: Sir James Edward Smith

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONSPublished:

Species Plantarum(1753)Start of Binomial system

of naming organism

Systema Naturae (1758)1st used binomial system

consistently

THOMAS MALTHUSHe believed that:

Populations can grow geometrically

Resources increase slowly or not at all

Predictions guided Darwin

formulation of the Theory of Natural Selection

Born: August 1, 1744 Died: Dec 28, 1829 Jesuit seminary at Amiens 1756 French Army in Germany 1761 Left the army and studied Medicine and botany

Jean Baptiste de Lamarck

Published: Flore Fracaise in 1778

Histoire Naturelle des Animaux sans vertebres

1815, 1822

Coined the term INVERTEBRATES

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONSImportant: Proposed

modern species had descended from other species:Theory of Inheritance of Acquired

CharacteristicsTheory of Use and DisusePhysiological needs drive Lamarckan

Evolution

VIEWS on EVOLUTIONEvolution:

process of increasing complexity and perfection

NO Extinction, disappeared species just evolved into different species

Born: Aug 23, 1769 Worked as a:

Tutor, professor of animal history, inspector general of public education and state councilor

Founded vertebrate paleontology

Established: extinction of past life forms

Georges Cuvier

VIEWS on EVOLUTIONSaw organisms as integrated wholes

No part can be modified without impairing functional integration

Do not believe organic evolutionMummified cats and ibises from Egypt

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONHistory of living organisms

Recorded in layers of rocks containing fossilsClassified organisms as embranchments

Similarities were due to common function not common ancestry

Believed that the Earth was immensely oldCatastrophes caused that each one wiped out a

number of speciesRevolutions: events with natural causesCATASTROPHISM:

Through periodic revolutions or catastrophes

Born in 1726 Edinburgh

Founder of Modern Geology

James Hutton

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONSEarth is perpetually being formedPerceived sedimentation

takes place so slowly that even the oldest rocks are made up of “materials that furnished from the ruins of former continents”

Great geological cycle

THEORY OF GRADUALISMGreat age of the Earth: 1st revolutionary concept from the new science of geology

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Scottish lawyer turned geologist Published: Principles of Geology Believed Hutton’s theory of GRADUALISM

CHARLES LYELL

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONSPublished:

Principles of Geology

UNIFORMITARIANISM incorporated with Hutton’s theory

Slow subtle processes could cause substantial change over time

natural agents now at work on and within the Earth have operated with

general uniformity through immensely long periods of time

Gregor Mendel

Austrian BiologistFather of Classical

Genetics

Discovered basic principles on heredity by breeding garden peasLAW OF INDEPENDENT ASSORTMENTLAW OF SEGREGATION

CHARLES DARWIN

Born in England on February 2, 1809

Fascinated with nature as a boyStudied theology in CambridgeVoyage of the H.M.S. Beagle

Observed varied adaptations (Galapagos islands)

Darwin’s finches: 14 species

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONSRead the essay of Malthus

Published: Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)

Believed that:Species evolved from ancestral speciesNatural selection as the mechanism of evolutionSurvival of the fittest

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACEBorn in England on 1823English naturalistHenry Walter Bates:

introduced Beetle collectionWent to the Amazon in

1848-1852Studied Malayan

Archipelago in 1854 Collected 125 660 species

for 8 years of stay

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS1858- wrote Darwin a letter

Because he realized how species evolvedchanged because

fittest individuals survived and reproducedpassing their advantageous characters

Both ideas were presented to the Linnaean Society

HUGO de Vries Believed that:

Species evolve from other species through sudden large changes of character traits

1848 Born in Netherlands

1880 experiments with plants

Rediscovered Mendel’s works

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONSWorked with

Oenothera lamarkiana (evening primrose)

Theory of MutationNew species could arise in single jumpsToday: nothing to do with genetic mutations

Variants isolated from these plants were caused by aberrant chromosomal segregations and no to mutations

CARL CORRENS1864 Born in Munich1885 entered University of Munich (botany)Had redefined Mendel’s discovery “laws of

heredity”1900 published: G. Mendel’s Law

Concerning the Behavior of the Progeny of Racial hybrids

Works were destroyed when Berlin was bombed in 1945

CARL CORRENS

ERICH VON TSCHERMAK- SEYSENEGG

1871 Vienna Austria1898 started doing experiments in plant

breeding using peas1900 independently derived Mendel’s laws of

inheritanceImproved crops using laws of heredity

High yielding crops of: wheat, barley and oats

ROSALIND FRANKLIN

WHO IS SHE???

JAMES WATSON and FRANCIS CRICK

Discovered DNA: double helix structure