The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection.

the statistical basis for evolutionary biology

First edition of one of the key works in the modern synthesis of genetics and Darwinian evolution. Rare in such nice condition. This copy awarded by Imperial College as a prize for achievement in biology, with the signature of prominent chemist Sir Henry Thomas Tizard, rector of the university.

Author Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890-1962) was a 'a genius who almost single-handedly created the foundations for modern statistical science' (Hald, A History of Mathematical Statistics, p. 738). He applied this field to evolutionary biology with spectacular results.

By the end of the nineteenth century even scientists sympathetic to Darwin's theory had turned away due to lingering questions about the mechanism of natural selection. The turn-of-the-century rediscovery of Mendel's laws, and new discoveries by figures such as Thomas Hunt Morgan, laid the foundation for modern genetics. But it was Fisher's work that mathematically proved the feasibility of the system, which he laid out in detail in the present volume. Though much of the book is concerned with Fisher's eugenicist beliefs about 'the decline of civilization', its significance 'comes from three of the earlier chapters, one about natural selection, a second about sexual selection, and a third about the way genetic systems evolve' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

First edition; 8vo; colour frontispiece and 1 plate, contents very faintly toned in the margins but overall clean; original blue cloth, titles to spine gilt, prize bookplate, cloth lightly rubbed at the extremities, an excellent copy; 272pp.