The development of population genetics

Abstract

The origins and development of population genetics up to 1930 deal specifically with the fusion of Darwinian natural selection with Mendelian genetics into a theory that could explain what Darwinism couldn’t—variation in a population was important because it was able to provide knowledge about heritable traits that were simply outside the grasp of the experimental breeder. Before the work of R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane (1892–1964), and Sewall Wright (1889–1988), there were developments that proved crucial for Mendelism, especially the formulation of the Hardy–Weinberg law. By making simplifying assumptions about the large size of the population and its high degree of genetic variability, Fisher was able to demonstrate how his stochastic distributions led to the conclusion that natural selection acting on single genes (rather than mutation, random extinction, epistasis etc.) was the primary determinant in the evolutionary process.