The Making of the Modern Synthesis (Graduate Seminar)
Kathleen Smith and John Willis, instructors
Spring 2004
Jan 13 -- Darwin -- looking back
Jan 20 -- The years after Darwin - Natural Selection, the mechanisms of evolution
Jan 27 -- The biometricians vs. the mutationists - Bateson, Galton, Pearson, etc.
Feb 3 -- The first synthesis: Fisher and The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection
Feb 10 -- Haldane The Causes of Evolution Eugenics; science and politics
Feb 17 --- Sewall Wright and the major disputes in early population genetic theory
Feb 24 -- The fate of the shifting balance theory: what do we think now?
March 2 -- T. Dobzhansky: Genetics of the Evolutionary Process: The modern view emerges
March 9 -- Spring Break
March 16 -- Ernst Mayr Systematics and the Origin of Species: The integration of ecology and biogeography
March 23 -- George Gaylord Simpson: Tempo and Mode in Evolution - Macroevolution
March 30 -- Waddington and Goldschmidt: early EvoDevo?
April 6 -- Modern debates: where are we now?
April 13 -- Wrapping it up