3 Great Stuart Street, Edinburgh EH3 6AP
Fleeming Jenkin was appointed by Queen Victoria as the first Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. He is now best known for raising an important objection to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1867 Jenkin argued that any favourable mutation that arose in one individual of a species would be rapidly swamped by interbreeding with a large population of normal individuals. This argument depended on the belief that characteristics of parents were simply ‘blended’ in the offspring. The rise of modern genetics, which invalidated the ‘blending’ model of inheritance, eventually resolved this problem, but it presented a serious problem for Darwin’s theory at the time.
No public access.
Fleeming Jenkin (1833–85).
2 Responses to “House of Fleeming Jenkin”
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Can I suggest you update your text to read
Fleeming Jenkin was appointed by Queen Victoria as the first Regius Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh…
Many thanks for the suggestions regarding Fleeming Jenkin and the kind offer of material for the Maxwell page. I’ve amended the Fleeming Jenkin text as you suggested. We’d be very grateful for any images that we could include on the Maxwell page and the panoramic video, when it becomes available.