Publisher's Synopsis
Progress in genetics today would not have been possible without Darwin's revolution, but the man who undermined belief in God's creation was remarkably timid. He spent most of his life in seclusion, a semi-invalid, riddled with doubts, fearing the controversy his theories might unleash.;In this book, Jonathan Miller unravels Darwin's life and contribution to biology and traces the path from his scientific predecessors to the later modifications that his own evolutionary theories required. In this way, he provides a clear historical perspective on the progress from pre-Darwinian biology to modern genetics and the crucial discovery of chromosomes.