Evolutionary biology has always been controversial: in Darwin's time, there was the famous debate in Britain between Bishop "Soapy Sam" Wilburforce and Thomas Huxley; at the turn of the century, there was the Skopes "monkey" trial in the US; and today, there have been efforts in, for example, Louisiana to require that "creationism" be taught alongside the "theory" of evolution. Yet the most serious attacks on Darwin's theory came not from religion but from science itself. In the 19th century, physicists led by Lord Kelvin argued that the earth was too "young" to have allowed enough time for evolution to have occurred. With the discovery of natural radiation, however, the age of the earth was greatly increased to several billions of years--old enough for evolution to occur. But where physics failed, Mendelian and population genetics stepped in with a scientific assault on Darwin's principle of natural selection. It wasn't until the late 1930's and 1940's that evolutionary biology was reconciled with genetics. The first person to propose this synthesis was Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900- 1975) in his Genetics and the Origin of Species, (1937). With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of the Russian archives to Western scholars, Dr. Mark Adams is undertaking the first full-scale study of this founder of modern Western population genetics. Dr. Adams is focussing his study of Dobzhansky on the period 1900 to 1937 when "Dobbie" published his book launching the evolutionary biology synthesis. He is also pursuing the persistent Russian dimension of Dobbie's work even after he moved to the United States (1927). Dr. Adams aims to clarify the influence of the Kiev school of cytogenetics on Dobzhansky's chromosomal work (1914-1924); the views of his Petersburg mentor, Filipchenko, on his approach to micro- and macroevolution, and on his social views (1924-27) the influence of Russian entomological traditions on his approach to populations, species, and field practice; his gradual assimilation of the conventions and practices of T. H. Morgan's laboratory when he came to the United States; the influence of his Russian background on the writing of his evolutionary classic; his role in supporting Russian geneticists and opposing Lysenkoism during the period 1937-1960; and the abiding influence of his formative Russian years in shaping the worldview that informed both his research and writings on heredity, society, cosmology, and the human conditions, 1960-1974.
