Darwin's Man in Brazil: The Evolving Science of Fritz Müller
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Book Overview
Fritz M ller (1821-1897), though not as well known as his colleague Charles Darwin, belongs in the cohort of great nineteenth-century naturalists. In Darwin's Man in Brazil, David A. West recovers M ller's legacy. He describes the close intellectual kinship between M ller and Darwin, detailing a lively correspondence spanning seventeen years, in which the two men often discussed new research topics and exchanged ideas. Darwin frequently praised M ller's powers of observation and interpretation, counting him among those scientists whose opinions he valued most.
A free thinker who refused to sign the Christian oaths required of teachers in Prussia, M ller emigrated to Brazil in 1852 to become a pioneer farmer researching tropical biology. In the 1860s he reorganized his biological research in order to test Darwin's theory of evolution. Conducting field studies to answer questions generated from a Darwinian perspective, M ller was unique among naturalists testing Darwin's theory of natural selection because he investigated an enormous diversity of plants and animals rather than a relatively narrow range of taxa.
Despite the importance and scope of his work, however, M ller is known for relatively few of his discoveries. West remedies this oversight, chronicling the life and work of this remarkable and overlooked man of science.
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