Evolution
From the fixed ladder of nature to the tree of life rewritten in DNA — how life came to explain itself.
Each star is a thinker or work; solid lines draw the constellation of a school, dashed threads the passage of ideas between eras.
Select any point on the timeline to read about it.
All entries by era
Evolution 1730 CE – 2030 CE
From the fixed ladder of nature to the tree of life rewritten in DNA — how life came to explain itself.
- 1735 CE
Carl Linnaeus, Systema Naturae. Linnaeus gives every organism a two-part Latin name and a nested hierarchy of ranks, imposing order on nature's diversity. He believed species were fixed and separately created, yet his classification later became the very framework in which common descent could be read.
- 1809 CE
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Philosophie zoologique. Lamarck proposes that species change over time, driven by use and disuse and the inheritance of acquired traits. His mechanism proved wrong, but he was among the first to argue seriously that life is not fixed — that organisms transform across generations.
- 1830 CE
Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology. Lyell argues that the Earth was shaped by slow, uniform processes still at work today, implying an age of many millions of years. This vast timescale — carried by Darwin aboard the Beagle — gave natural selection the room it needed to operate.
- 1858 CE
Darwin & Wallace, joint Linnean paper. Prompted by a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, who had independently hit on the same idea, Darwin agrees to a joint presentation of natural selection to the Linnean Society. Two naturalists, working oceans apart, arrive at the mechanism that would reorganise all of biology.
- 1859 CE
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species. Darwin marshals overwhelming evidence that species descend, with modification, from common ancestors, and that natural selection is the driving force. The book replaces a static ladder of being with a branching tree of life and makes evolution a scientific research programme.
- 1866 CE
Gregor Mendel, experiments on plant hybrids. Breeding thousands of pea plants, Mendel shows that traits pass down as discrete units in predictable ratios rather than blending. Ignored for decades, his work — rediscovered in 1900 — supplied the missing account of heredity that Darwin's theory badly needed.
- 1918 CE
R. A. Fisher, population genetics. Fisher shows mathematically that many small Mendelian factors, taken together, produce the continuous variation Darwin studied. His work founds population genetics and dissolves the long-standing quarrel between biometricians and Mendelians.
- 1942 CE
Julian Huxley, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. Huxley names and codifies the fusion of Darwinian selection, Mendelian genetics, systematics and palaeontology into one coherent theory. The Modern Synthesis becomes the reigning framework of twentieth-century biology, uniting fields that had developed apart.
- 1953 CE
Watson, Crick & Franklin, structure of DNA. The double helix reveals how genetic information is stored and copied, giving evolution a physical, chemical basis. Mutation and inheritance are now readable in the sequence of bases, and biology gains the means to trace descent at the molecular level.
- 1976 CE
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene. Dawkins popularises the view that natural selection acts most clearly on genes, with organisms as the vehicles they build to propagate themselves. The perspective sharpens debates about altruism, cooperation and the units on which selection truly operates.
- 1983 CE
Evo-devo & the homeobox. The discovery of homeobox (Hox) genes shows that a shared toolkit of master regulators shapes body plans from flies to humans. Evolutionary developmental biology reveals that major changes in form can come from tweaking when and where existing genes switch on.
- 2001 CE
Human Genome Project & genomics. The first draft of the human genome, and the flood of sequencing that followed, let biologists reconstruct evolutionary relationships directly from DNA and even recover genes from extinct species. Evolution becomes a data science, and Darwin's tree is redrawn in the fine grain of genomes.
The milestones
1735
Carl Linnaeus, Systema Naturae
Naming the living world
Linnaeus gives every organism a two-part Latin name and a nested hierarchy of ranks, imposing order on nature's diversity. He believed species were fixed and separately created, yet his classification later became the very framework in which common descent could be read.
1809
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Philosophie zoologique
The first theory of transmutation
Lamarck proposes that species change over time, driven by use and disuse and the inheritance of acquired traits. His mechanism proved wrong, but he was among the first to argue seriously that life is not fixed — that organisms transform across generations.
1830
Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology
Deep time
Lyell argues that the Earth was shaped by slow, uniform processes still at work today, implying an age of many millions of years. This vast timescale — carried by Darwin aboard the Beagle — gave natural selection the room it needed to operate.
1858
Darwin & Wallace, joint Linnean paper
Natural selection announced
Prompted by a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, who had independently hit on the same idea, Darwin agrees to a joint presentation of natural selection to the Linnean Society. Two naturalists, working oceans apart, arrive at the mechanism that would reorganise all of biology.
1859
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species
Descent with modification
Darwin marshals overwhelming evidence that species descend, with modification, from common ancestors, and that natural selection is the driving force. The book replaces a static ladder of being with a branching tree of life and makes evolution a scientific research programme.
1866
Gregor Mendel, experiments on plant hybrids
The laws of inheritance
Breeding thousands of pea plants, Mendel shows that traits pass down as discrete units in predictable ratios rather than blending. Ignored for decades, his work — rediscovered in 1900 — supplied the missing account of heredity that Darwin's theory badly needed.
1918
R. A. Fisher, population genetics
Reconciling Mendel and Darwin
Fisher shows mathematically that many small Mendelian factors, taken together, produce the continuous variation Darwin studied. His work founds population genetics and dissolves the long-standing quarrel between biometricians and Mendelians.
1942
Julian Huxley, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis
The Modern Synthesis
Huxley names and codifies the fusion of Darwinian selection, Mendelian genetics, systematics and palaeontology into one coherent theory. The Modern Synthesis becomes the reigning framework of twentieth-century biology, uniting fields that had developed apart.
1953
Watson, Crick & Franklin, structure of DNA
The molecule of heredity
The double helix reveals how genetic information is stored and copied, giving evolution a physical, chemical basis. Mutation and inheritance are now readable in the sequence of bases, and biology gains the means to trace descent at the molecular level.
1976
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
The gene's-eye view
Dawkins popularises the view that natural selection acts most clearly on genes, with organisms as the vehicles they build to propagate themselves. The perspective sharpens debates about altruism, cooperation and the units on which selection truly operates.
1983
Evo-devo & the homeobox
How genes build bodies
The discovery of homeobox (Hox) genes shows that a shared toolkit of master regulators shapes body plans from flies to humans. Evolutionary developmental biology reveals that major changes in form can come from tweaking when and where existing genes switch on.
2001 →
Human Genome Project & genomics
Reading the tree of life
The first draft of the human genome, and the flood of sequencing that followed, let biologists reconstruct evolutionary relationships directly from DNA and even recover genes from extinct species. Evolution becomes a data science, and Darwin's tree is redrawn in the fine grain of genomes.