Theodosius Dobzhansky in the context of "Evolutionary biologist"

The modern synthesis was the early 20th-century synthesis of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel's ideas on heredity into a joint mathematical framework. Julian Huxley coined the term in his 1942 book, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. The synthesis combined the ideas of natural selection, Mendelian genetics, and population genetics. It also related the broad-scale macroevolution seen by palaeontologists to the small-scale microevolution of local populations.

The synthesis was defined differently by its founders, with Ernst Mayr in 1959, G. Ledyard Stebbins in 1966, and Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1974 offering differing basic postulates, though they all include natural selection, working on heritable variation supplied by mutation. Other major figures in the synthesis included E. B. Ford, Bernhard Rensch, Ivan Schmalhausen, and George Gaylord Simpson. An early event in the modern synthesis was R. A. Fisher's 1918 paper on mathematical population genetics, though William Bateson, and separately Udny Yule, had already started to show how Mendelian genetics could work in evolution in 1902.

Conrad Hal Waddington CBE FRS FRSE (8 November 1905 – 26 September 1975) was a British developmental biologist, paleontologist, geneticist, embryologist and philosopher who laid the foundations for systems biology, epigenetics, and evolutionary developmental biology.

His theory of genetic assimilation probably has a Darwinian explanation, which contrast with the fact that Waddington himself was very critic about the notion of natural selection and Neo-Darwinism. Leading evolutionary biologists including Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayr considered that Waddington was using genetic assimilation to support so-called Lamarckian inheritance, the acquisition of inherited characteristics through the effects of the environment during an organism's lifetime.

Drosophilist is a term used to refer to both the specific group of scientists trained in the laboratory of Thomas Hunt Morgan, and more generally any scientist who uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to study genetics, development, neurogenetics, behavior and a host of other subjects in animal biology.

The core members of the original drosophilists at Columbia University included Morgan, Alfred Sturtevant, Calvin Bridges and Hermann Joseph Muller. Drosophilists directly connected with Morgan at Caltech included Theodosius Dobzhansky and George Beadle.

The Bay Area Biosystematists is a group of biologists, geneticists, paleontologists, and systematists that are also interested in evolution. The group has been active in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1936, and is notable as a connection between many of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century, including Herbert Baker, Theodosius Dobzhansky and G. Ledyard Stebbins who led the modern synthesis. Meetings generally occur the second Tuesday of every month during the academic year at one of the Bay Area campuses (UC Berkeley, UC Davis, the California Academy of Sciences, San Jose State U, etc.).

Genetics and the Origin of Species is a 1937 book by the Ukrainian-American evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky. It is regarded as one of the most important works of modern synthesis and was one of the earliest. The book popularized the work of population genetics to other biologists and influenced their appreciation for the genetic basis of evolution.

In his book Dobzhansky applied the theoretical work of Sewall Wright (1889–1988) to the study of natural populations. Dobzhansky uses theories of mutation, natural selection, and speciation to explain the habits of populations and the resulting effects on their genetic behavior. The book said evolution was a process that accounts for the diversity of all life on Earth. Dobzhansky said that evolution regarding the origin and nature of species, which at the time was deemed mysterious, had potential for progress.

"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" is an essay by the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, criticizing anti-evolution creationism and espousing theistic evolution. The essay was first published in American Biology Teacher in 1973.

Dobzhansky first used the title statement, in a slight variation, in a 1964 presidential address to the American Society of Zoologists, "Biology, Molecular and Organismic", to assert the importance of organismic biology in response to the challenge of the rising field of molecular biology. The term "light of evolution"—or sub specie evolutionis—had been used earlier by the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and then by the biologist Julian Huxley.