Tuesday, December 5, 2017

"God had an inordinate fondness for beetles." -- J. B. S. Haldane

J. B. S. Haldane (5 November 1892 – 1 December 1964) was a British, later Indian, scientist known for his work in the study of physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and in mathematics, where he made innovative contributions to the fields of statistics and biostatistics.

He is famous for the (possibly apocryphal) response that he gave when some theologians asked him what could be inferred about the mind of the Creator from the works of His Creation: "An inordinate fondness for beetles." This is in reference to there being over 400,000 known species of beetles in the world, and that this represents 40% of all known insect species (at the time of the statement, it was over half of all known insect species).

His first paper in 1915 demonstrated genetic linkage in mammals while subsequent works helped to create population genetics, thus establishing a unification of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution by natural selection whilst laying the groundwork for modern evolutionary synthesis.

Wikipedia - J. B. S. Haldane

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