House of Fleeming Jenkin

3 Great Stuart Street, Edinburgh EH3 6AP

Fleeming Jenkin's house

Fleeming Jenkin was a professor of engineering at the University of Edinburgh who raised 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).

Fleeming Jenkin (1833–85).

 

 

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