Professor Joe Cain publishes blog posts on many subjects related to his research interests.
George Gaylord Simpson was the undisputed American heavy-weight in macro-evolutionary theory prior to paleobiology’s disciplinary formation in the 1970s. Memory of Simpson’s intellectual influence on this next generation of thinkers is tied intimately to aggressive More…
Published in 1872, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals was a book at the very heart of Darwin’s research interests – a central pillar of his ‘human’ series. This book engaged some More…
Historians of the synthesis period in evolutionary studies, aka evolutionary synthesis, are deeply familiar with the Columbia Biological Series. This monograph series included key texts for the American evolutionist community, including Theodosius Dobzhansky’s (1937) Genetics More…
In 2003, I co-authored publication of a transcription of Leslie Clarence Dunn‘s 1927 report on genetics research facilities in Russia. This appeared in the Mendel Newsletter, published by the American Philosophical Society Library as Joe Cain More…
UCL Talking Heads asked me to answer some questions about student life and teaching at the university. In this film, I answer the question, “Where is your favourite space on the UCL campus?” This is a project More…
Sergeĭ Sergeevich Chetverikov (=Tschetwerikoff) was a Russian entomologist, an expert on butterflies, and a pioneer of population geneticists. Born into a well-educated, professional family, Chetverikov entered the University of Moscow in 1900, graduating six years More…
The statue from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the British Museum is a beautiful, captivating object. It is a “moai”. Its name is Hoa Hakananai’a (loosely translated to “Stolen Friend”, sometimes spelled Hoa Haka Nanai’a). More…
Humans came to understand the significance of fossils only in the early nineteenth century: their extraordinary variety and quantity, forms unlike anything seen in the world today, incomprehensibly vast periods of time for layer upon More…
During research concerning Charles and Emma Darwin’s life at number 12 Upper Gower Street, Bloomsbury, London, I identified several errors and vagaries in biographical material found in standard reference works. This note communicates corrections and More…
Some years ago I searched for archival materials, or papers, related to Joseph Henry Woodger, philosopher, biologist and advocate of logical positivism (Cain 2000) (obituary). The hope was to assess the extent of informal contact More…
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