Origins of Evolutionary Thought

Time Line

1785 James Hutton

James Hutton (3 June 1726) Scottish geologist, physician, chemical manufacture, naturalist, and experimental agriculturalist Originated the theory of uniformitarianism (fundamental principle of geology explains the features of the Earths crust by means of natural processes over time.

Change by wind, water, ice, volcanic activity and earthquakes that alter the landscape in a dramatic and violent manner.

1798 Thomas Malthus

Reverend Thomas Malthus (13 February 1766 23 December 1834) English cleric and scholar, influential in the fields of political economy and demography.
His An Essay on the Principle of Population observed that sooner or later population will be checked by famine and disease, leading to what is known as a Malthusian catastrophe.

1. That the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence. 2. That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase. 3. That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice.

1809 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck. He was a French naturalist, soldier, biologist, academic and early proponent of the idea of evolution. In 1801, he published Systme des animaux sans vertbres, a major work on the classification of invertebrates, a term he coined. Lamarck stressed two main themes in his biological work. 1. The first was that the environment gives rise to changes in animals. 2. The second principle was that life was structured in an orderly manner and that many different parts of all bodies make it possible for the organic movements of animals.

1831 Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin, FRS (12 February 1809 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations and in 1838 conceived his theory of natural selection.

1833 Charles Lyell

Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, (14 November 1797 22 February 1875) was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularized James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism. Lyell was also one of the first to believe that the world is older than 300 million years, on the basis of its geological anomalies.

1858 Alfred Wallace

Alfred Wallace was born in the Welsh village of Llanbadoc, (8 January 1823 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago

1859
Darwin publishes On The Origin of Species