Richard Benedict Goldschmidt

GENETICS: R. B. GOLDSCHMIDT "REPEA TS" AND THE MODERN THEORY OF THE GENE By RicHARD

Stjbmitted in Partial Satisfaction of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Heterodox Concepts in Modern Evolutionary Embryology, 1900-1950

Whatever the evolutionary model we adopt, in the case of sexual reproduction, the process has an embryological significance because this is the way to generate individuals and to perpetuate the life. The connection between evolution and embryology is a necessary event. In this evolutionary context, the key question is: how two species are formed from the same biological unit? During the first h...

Gregory Goodwin Pincus (1903-1967)

Gregory Goodwin Pincus [4], one of the original researchers responsible for the development of the first oral contraceptive pill [5], was born in Woodbine, New Jersey, on 19 April 1903 to Russian Jewish parents. In 1924 Pincus received his BS degree from Cornell University [6], and in 1927 he received his MS and PhD from Harvard University [7], having studied under William Ernest Castle [8] and...

The Return of Hopeful Monsters

Big Brother, the tyrant of George Orwell's 1984, directed his daily Two Minutes Hate against Emmanuel Goldstein, enemy of the people. When I studied evolutionary biology in graduate school during the mid-1960s, official rebuke and derision focused upon Richard Goldschmidt, a famous geneticist who, we were told, had gone astray. Although 1984 creeps up on us, I trust that the world will not be i...