Theodosius Dobzhansky

Overview

Dobzhansky was a Ukrainian-born geneticist who worked in Morgan's laboratory and then spent decades sampling wild fruit fly populations in the American west. He showed that natural populations carry far more genetic variation than the theory of the time expected, and that the frequencies of chromosome arrangements shift seasonally and with altitude, which made selection something observed in the field rather than only modelled on paper. Genetics and the Origin of Species is the book that made the synthesis usable by working biologists, because it translated Fisher and Wright out of mathematics into evidence about species. His 1973 essay arguing that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution is two pages and is the best single thing to read first.

Where to start reading

• Genetics and the Origin of Species 1937

  The book that connected population-genetic theory to observed variation in wild populations and set the pattern for the synthesis that followed.

• Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution 1973

  A short essay in The American Biology Teacher arguing that evolution is the organising framework the rest of biology depends on.

Part of

• The modern synthesis
• Evolutionary biology
• Genetics

Sources

1. Theodosius Dobzhansky Wikipedia
2. Modern synthesis (20th century) Wikipedia
3. Understanding Evolution UC Museum of Paleontology, Berkeley