The Biological Basis of Human Freedom

PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS OF HUMAN EVOLUTION BY LEADING 20TH CENTURY RUSSIAN-AMERICAN EVOLUTIONIST, INSCRIBED TO OXFORD PROFESSOR.

New York: Columbia University Press, 1960. First paperback edition. 13 X 20 cm volume, color printed paper covers, inscribed on half-title page, "To Prof & Mrs G C Varley with warmest regards from the author, Oxford, Sept 20 '61". i-vi, [1], 139 pp. Light browning to page edges, otherwise very good+ in custom archival mylar cover.

THEODOSIUS DOBZHANSKY (1900 - 1975) was a Russian-born American geneticist and evolutionary biologist. His 1937 work Genetics and the Origin of Species became a major influence on the Modern Synthesis. He was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1964 and the Franklin Medal in 1973. Before immigrating to the United States, Dobzhansky published 35 scientific works on entomology and genetics. Dobzhansky immigrated to the United States in 1927 on a workâ€"study scholarship from the International Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation. Upon arriving in New York City, he joined the Drosophila Group at Columbia University working alongside Thomas Hunt Morgan and Alfred Sturtevant. Their work provided crucial information on Drosophila cytogenetics. He followed Morgan to the California Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1940. Dobzhansky's work was instrumental in spreading the idea that it is through mutations in genes that natural selection takes place. He returned to Columbia University from 1940 to 1962, then moved to the Rockefeller Institute (shortly to become Rockefeller University) until his retirement in 1971. Dobzhansky's work in the field of evolutionary genetics, with the help of Sewall Wright, integrated standards of the theoretical, natural historical, and experimental work.

PROVENANCE: GEORGE COPLEY VARLEY: (1910 - 1983) was a British entomologist and a pioneer in the studies of insect population dynamics and was the author of Insect Population Ecology, an influential text. A colleague of David Lack during the war years, he conducted studies on insect population dynamics in Wytham Woods. In 1945, Varley became a reader in entomology at King's College, Newcastle-on-Tyne and in 1948 he was appointed Hope Professor at Oxford.