WINNER OF THE JOHN FREDERICK LEWIS AWARD FOR 2009

This monograph describes the establishment of the hypothesis that Charles Darwin’s “natural selection,” reformulated by R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and S. Wright in the light of Mendelian genetics, is the primary or exclusive mechanism for biological evolution. During the 1930s, alternatives such as Lamarchism, macromutations, and orthogenesis were rejected in favor of natural selection acting on small mutations, but there were disagreement about the role of random genetic drift in evolution. By the 1950s, research by T. Dobzhansky, E. B. Ford, and others persuaded leading evolutionists that natural selection was so powerful that drift was generally unimportant. This conclusion was accepted by most; however, a significant minority of biology textbooks and popular articles mentioned drift in the late 1960s.

Stephen G. Brush was employed as a theoretical physicist at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (1959–1965), a staff member at Harvard Project Physics (1965–1968, developing a historically oriented physics course for high schools), and Lecturer in Physics and History of Science at Harvard University (1966–1968). From 1968 through 2006 he served on the faculty of the University of Maryland, University Park, with a joint appointment in the Department of History and the Institute for Physical Science & Technology. He retired in 2006 and holds the title Distinguished University Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus.