Increasingly, historians of biology are paying attention to the various ‘personal syntheses’ achieved in the early to mid-twentieth century. This period, which has traditionally been viewed as one of synthesis, is becoming one of many syntheses, as we ask how individual evolutionists brought together and negotiated the assorted scientific, conceptual, practical and other resources at their disposal. The present paper explores a case in which these two perspectives intersect.
The synthesis in evolutionary studies, traditionally conceived, amounted to a reconciliation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection with the burgeoning field of Mendelian genetics. In accounts of this synthesis, Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890-1962) routinely takes centre-stage. His celebrated paper of 1918 represents for many the first successful attempt to mathematically reconcile Darwinism and Mendelism. At other times, historians speak of this theoretical synthesis as the achievement, somewhat paradoxically, of a whole community of researchers. This paper, then, grapples with questions as to the nature of the evolutionary synthesis, and to whom (if anyone) it belonged.
By way of disentangling the above difficulty, and with reference to correspondence and new archival material, this paper follows Fisher through the formative years between his student days on the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge in the 1910s, and the publication in 1930 of his lastingly influential Genetical Theory of Natural Selection. In particular, I ask: how did Fisher synthesise Darwinian selectionism and Mendelian genetics? From which resources did he gain his knowledge of each? Why did he set himself this synthesising task?
