On Darwin's Shoulders; On Darwin's Shoulders

Abstract

The article discusses the developments in the field of evolutionary biology. The vision of common ancestry revolutionized studies in comparative anatomy, comparative embryology and taxonomy has become the unifying principle of all biology. By 1910, biologists recognized that genes can mutate at random into different forms, known as alleles. Joining the principles of genetics with the evolutionary theory of natural selection formulated by naturalist Charles Darwin initiated progress in evolutionary biology.