The books describes the historical development of evolutionary genetics, starting from early ideas on evolution and ending with the modern synthesis. It provides an extensive coverage of the history of both evolution and heredity, and gives detailed descriptions of the works of Lamarck, Darwin, Mendel, Näageli, Weismann, de Vries, Galton, Pearson, Bateson, Johannsen, Morgan, Fisher, Wright and Haldane, amongst many others. The book does not deal only with a description of historical work: it also analyses and critiques existing theories and evolutionary beliefs throughout history, and discusses several controversies between biologists.

Dr Prakash Gorroochurn, Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at Columbia University, obtained his Ph.D. in Mathematical Population Genetics from Monash University, Australia. He is an Associate Editor of the journals The American Statistician. His research interests include mathematical population genetics, genetic epidemiology, and the history of probability and statistics.

He is also the author of the book “Classic Problems of Probability” which won the 2012 PROSE Award for Mathematics from The American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence.