Key Player's Contribution to Evolution

Timeline created by lakenconrad14
  • Carolus Linnaeus

    Carolus Linnaeus
    Carolus Linnaeus first published his book about the classification system for all living things, Systema Naturae. In this book he described plant and animal reproduction methods and their physical appearance.
  • Pierre Louis Maupertuis

    Pierre Louis Maupertuis
    Wrote about natural modification and reproduction over many generations, producing new species and races. All a concept of natural selection.
  • Charles Bonnet

    Charles Bonnet
    He belived in the concept of "pre-formation", where females carry an identical miniature form of future generations.
  • Georges-Louis Leclerc

    Georges-Louis Leclerc
    Leclerc published a 44 volume encyclopedia describing everything he knew about the natural world. He also discussed the similarities and common ancestry of humans and apes.
  • James Hutton

    James Hutton
    He described a geologic process called "deep time". He was also included in the plutonism and uniformitarianism theories.
  • Erasmus Darwin

    Erasmus Darwin
    He published Zoönomia in which he suggested that "all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament".
  • Thomas Malthus

    Thomas Malthus
    Malthus observed that plants and animals produced way more offspring than could survive. He concluded that unless family size was controlled, population growth would increase and food supply would decrease.
  • Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

    Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
    Lamarck believed in altered behavior, the belief that changes in the enviornment caused the needs of organisms to change as well. He also stated that all changes were inheritable, which proved to be false.
  • William Paley

    William Paley
    His book Natural Theology was written in response to Erasmus Darwin's ideas of transmutation in species.
  • William Charles Wells

    William Charles Wells
    He talked about the evolution of humans and the principle of natural selection infront of the Royal Selection.
  • New Evolutionary Theory

    New Evolutionary Theory
    Darwin and Wallace publish a new evolutionary theory explaining common descent and the tree of life. This theory was based on natural selection.
  • Thomas Henry Huxley

    Thomas Henry Huxley
    He was a British anatomist who was one of the most important naturalists to be convinced by the origin of evolution.
  • Gregor Mendel

    Gregor Mendel
    He became known as the founder of genetics. He used pea plants to show inheritance, referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.
  • Alfred Wegener

    Alfred Wegener
    Wegener's first edition of The Origin of Continents and Oceans was published explaining his theory of "continental drift". He claimed a single mass of land had formed together, called Pangaea that had been slowly seperating.
  • J.B.S. Haldane

    J.B.S. Haldane
    He applied statistical analysis to real-world examples of natural selection. He used moths to show that natural selection worked at a fast rate.
  • Sewall Wright,

    Sewall Wright,
    He introduced adaptive landscape. He believed genetic drift and inbreeding could drive a small population away from an adaptive peak, allowing it to drive towards natural selection.
  • Sergei Chetverikov.

    Sergei Chetverikov.
    He helped bring together microevolution and macroevolution in his book, Genetics and the Origin of Species.
  • Motoo Kimura

     Motoo Kimura
    He argued that when the molecular clock is at it's least, most genetic mutations aren't harmful or helpful. Also mutation and genetic drift causes a large portion of genetic change.
  • Leigh Van Valen

    Leigh Van Valen
    He described that a species involved in one or more evolutionary arms races would need to be constantly changing in order to keep up with the species it was co-evolving.
  • Brian Goodwin

    Brian Goodwin
    He was a key founder of theoretical biology. He also made many contributions to biomathematics, complex systems and generative models in developmental biology.