Conway Zirkle (October 28, 1895 – March 28, 1972) was an American

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

and historian of science. Zirkle was professor emeritus at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

. He was highly critical of

Lamarckism Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...

, Lysenkoism, and Marxian biology.Joravsky, David. (1960). ''Evolution, Marxian Biology and the Social Scene by Conway Zirkle''. ''

Isis Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom () as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her sla ...

''. Vol. 51, No. 3. pp. 348–353.

Selected publications

Books * ''The Beginnings of Plant Hybridization'' (1935) * ''Death of a Science in Russia, the Fate of Genetics as Described in "Pravda" and Elsewhere'' (1949) * ''Evolution, Marxian Biology, and the Social Scene'' (1959) * ''The Evolution of Biology'' (1964) Papers * 1935.
The Inheritance of Acquired Characters and the Provisional Hypothesis of Pangenesis
'. '' American Naturalist'' 69: 417–445. * 1936. ''Further Notes on Pangenesis and the Inheritance of Acquired Characters''. '' American Naturalist'' 70: 529–546. * 1941. ''Natural Selection Before the 'Origin of Species. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association 84: 71–123. * 1946. ''The Early History of the Idea of the Inheritance of Acquired Characters and Pangenesis''. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. 335: 91–151. * 1947. ''The Theory of Concentric Spheres: Edmund Halley, Cotton Mather, & John Cleves Symmes''. Isis.

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the university press of the University of Chicago, a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It pu ...

(on behalf of The History of Science Society) 37: 155–159. * 1952. ''Early Ideas on Inbreeding and Crossbreeding''. In ''Heterosis'', edited by John W. Gowen, 1–13. Iowa State College Press. * 1958. ''The First Recognized Plant Hybrid''. '' Journal of Heredity'' 49: 137–138. * 1959. ''Species Before Darwin''. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 103: 636–644. * 1964. ''Some Oddities in the Delayed Discovery of Mendelism''. '' Journal of Heredity'' 55 (2): 65–72.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zirkle, Conway 1895 births 1972 deaths 20th-century American botanists 20th-century American historians Critics of Lamarckism University of Pennsylvania faculty