Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology

MONUMENTAL BIOGRAPHY OF SEWALL WRIGHT--SIGNED BY HIM, WITH NOTICE FROM JAMES CROW OF MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR WRIGHT AND OFFPRINT OF WRIGHT'S LAST PAPER SIGNED BY CROW.

17X24 cm hardcover, blue cloth binding, gilt title to spine, signature of Alan Robertson 1987 top of front free endpaper, frontis photographic portrait of Wright, inscribed and signed on title page, With best regards, Sewall Wright. i-xvi, 545 pp, references, publications of Sewall Wright, index. Corners bumped, very good in very good minus dust jacket with small edge tears, in protective mylar sleeve. Laid in notice of memorial service for Sewall Wright, March 1988, Madison WI, from James F. Crow on University of Wisconsin letterhead, "Sewall Wright died March 3; he was 98 years old last December 21. . Only a few hours before his death he was looking to the future, signing his name to a check for next month's rent and wondering whether reprints of his latest article (American Naturalist, January 1988) had yet arrived. His published work extended from 1912 to 1988, a span of 76 years!". Also laid in is an original offprint (fine condition) of said paper inscribed by Jim Crow to Alan Robertson: S Wright. Notes and Comments: Surfaces of selective value revisited, The American Naturalist 131 (January 1988):115-123, inscribed "To Alan with highest esteem. My only regret is that Sewall did not live long enough to send it himself.--Jim". Cited by M Ruse in Evolution Wars (2000): "An absolutely massive intellectual biography of one of this century's giants in evolutionary studies. What is really valuable about this work is that it treats not only of its central subject but also of others who interacted with Wright, most especially Theodosius Dobzhansky. The story of the always-fruitful, sometimes-uncomfortable relationship between Wright and Dobzhansky is itself worth the price of the volume. Also noted by Joe Felsenstein in Nature: "Provine's thorough and thoroughly admirable examination of Wright's life and influence, which is accompanied by a very useful collection of Wright's papers on evolution, is the best we have for any recent figure in evolutionary biology."

SEWELL GREEN WRIGHT (1889 - 1988) was an American geneticist known for his influential work on evolutionary theory and also for his work on path analysis. Wright and Fisher, along with J.B.S. Haldane, were the key figures in the modern synthesis that brought genetics and evolution together. Their work was essential to the contributions of Dobzhansky, Mayr, Simpson, Julian Huxley, and Stebbins. The modern synthesis was the most important development in evolutionary biology after Darwin. Wright also had a major effect on the development of mammalian genetics and biochemical genetics.

JAMES F. CROW (1916-2012) was Professor Emeritus of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a prominent population geneticist whose career spanned from the modern synthesis to the genomic era. Much of Crow's research was in the area of theoretical population genetics, but he has often ventured into the laboratory. Over a career that spanned more than 50 years, Crow and his collaborators studied a variety of traits in Drosophila, dissected the genetics of DDT resistance, measured the effects of minor mutations on the overall fitness of populations, described the behavior of mutations that do not play the selection game by Darwin's rules, and investigated many other subjects. His theoretical work has touched virtually every important subject in population genetics. Crow developed the concept of genetic load, has contributed to the theory of random drift in small populations, and has studied the effects of non-random mating and age-structured populations. Crow was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, The American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the World Academy of Art and Science.

PROVENANCE: ALAN ROBERTSON (1920-1989) was a British population geneticist. Elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1964. [MacKay, T F (1990), Alan Robertson (1920-1989)., Genetics 125 (1): 1-7, 1990 May; Hill, W G (1990), Alan Robertson: 21 February 1920-25 April 1989., Biographical memoirs of fellows of the Royal Society. Royal Society (Great Britain) 36: 465-88.].

Product Info

Publisher: Univeristy of Chicago Press

Year: 1986

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

First Edition

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