In article ,
Representative Trantis  wrote:
>I have read some of the workd of Dawkins, and have Read Darwin's two major
>works, (Origin and Descent).
>
>I am curious to read something from the 'other great' in evolutionary
>theory.
>
>Can anyone please recommend a title or two?

After Darwin, the "other great" is of course Alfred Russel Wallace.
Then maybe Lamarck, Fisher, Wright, Haldane, Simpson, Mayr, Kimura,
Hamilton, and Maynard Smith.  Others too, including Gould. 
Down there somewhere is Dawkins, who I think would not claim to have
innovated in evolutionary theory so much as to have explained.

There is a (big) difference between high visibility owing to doing
nice popularizations, and contribution to evolutionary theory.

Haldane was also a popularizer, and is usually quite a good read,
and Simpson could be very readable too.  Mayr writes quite accessibly.
Maynard Smith is an excellent read most of the time.
Fisher's "Genetical Theory of Natural Selection" is important but
much of it is terribly hard.  

The other thing to realize is that the advances often don't come in
books.  Much of Fisher's contributions, almost all of Wright's,
most of Haldane's, most of Kimura's (and so on) occurred in scientific
papers, not books.  You will run into this if you (say) ask where
Einstein's book is that introduced relativity.  He did try his hand at
writing a popularization, years later, but the advances came in papers.

-- 
Joe Felsenstein         joe{at}removethispart.gs.washington.edu
 Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington,
 Box 357730, Seattle, WA 98195-7730 USA
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