Key Texts

Key Texts in the Synthesis Period of Evolutionary Studies

Excerpt from photograph of conference attendees at 1947 Princeton conference organised by National Research Council's Committee on Common Problems of Genetics, Paleontology, and Systematics
Excerpt from photograph of conference attendees at 1947 Princeton conference organised by National Research Council’s Committee on Common Problems of Genetics, Paleontology, and Systematics.

The synthesis period of evolutionary studies, clustering in the late 1930s and 1940s, saw new approaches and new interdisciplinary conversations driving a spirit of innovation and transformation. Advocates celebrated a “modern synthesis” and focused attention on books in the Columbia Biological Series as textbooks for their common enterprise. Books in this series included:

  • Theodosius Dobzhansky’s (1937) Genetics and the Origin of Species
  • Ernst Mayr’s (1942) Systematics and the Origin of Species
  • George Gaylord Simpson’s (1944) Tempo and Mode in Evolution, which he later replaced with (1953) Major Features of Evolution
  • G. Ledyard Stebbins’s (1950) Variation and Evolution in Plants

There was much more to the history of the synthesis period than books in the Columbia Biological Series and their authors, together labelled as the “New York Circle”. This is commonly forgotten by those seeking to describe this period. At the same time, these key texts create a cluster that merits detailed analysis.