title: The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution (Great Discoveries)
author:  David Quammen 
description: <I>Starred Review.</i> Charles Darwin took 20 years to write his theory of natural selection: he produced <I>On the Origin of Species</I> only on learning that he was about to be scooped. Was he a chronic procrastinator? Or was he afraid of the reaction of his peers, who had scorned earlier books on the "transmutation" of species? A bit of both came into play, but as acclaimed science journalist Quammen (<I>Song of the Dodo</I>) shows, during those two decades, Darwin was busy conducting scientific research that would bolster his observations of the finches and mockingbirds of the Gal&aacute;pagos Islands. He raised pigeons and theorized that domestic varieties could be traced back to a species of wild dove. He floated asparagus seeds in saltwater to explain how plants moved from one continent to another. Quammen commences his portrait with Darwin's homecoming from his five-year trip on the <I>Beagle</I> and then focuses on how he gained enough confidence and evidence to publish a book that would displace humankind from its privileged position as a special creation. This often slyly witty book stands out among the flood of books being published for Darwin's bicentenary. <I>(July)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  The Third Culture
  
  
  [3.13.00]
  
  
  RICHARD DAWKINS ON W.D. HAMILTON (1936-2000)
  
  
  W. D. Hamilton (1936 - 2000)
  
  
  W D Hamilton is a good candidate for the title of most distinguished Darwinian
  since Darwin. Other candidates would have to include R A Fisher, whom Hamilton
  revered as a young student at Cambridge. Hamilton resembled Fisher in his
  penetrating biological intuition and his ability to render it in mathematics.
  But, like Darwin and unlike Fisher, he was also a superb field naturalist and
  explorer. I suspect that, of all his twentieth century successors, Darwin
  would most have enjoyed talking to Hamilton. Partly because they could have
  swapped jungle tales and beetle lore, partly because both were gentle and
  deep, but mostly because Hamilton the theorist was responsible for clearing up
  so many of the very problems that had intrigued and tantalised Darwin.
  
  
  William Donald Hamilton FRS was Royal Society Research Professor in the
  Department of Zoology at Oxford, and