Reactions to On the Origin of Species man to be envious of a naturalist like myself, immeasurably his inferior!" Darwin's had estimated that erosion of the Weald would take 300 million years, but in the second edition of "On the Origin of Species" published on 7 January 1860 he accepted that it would be safer to allow 150 million to 200 million years. Geologists knew the earth was ancient, but had felt unable to put realistic figures on the duration of past geological changes. Darwin's book provided a new impetus to quantifying geological time. His most prominent critic, John Phillips, had investigated how temperatures increased with depth
Genetics and the Origin of Species series of notable books: "Systematics and the Origin of Species" (1942) by Ernst Mayr; "Tempo and Mode in Evolution" (1944) by George Gaylord Simpson; and "Variation and Evolution in Plants" (1950) by G. Ledyard Stebbins. The emerging synthesis was called the evolutionary synthesis by Julian Huxley in his book, "". In 1947, a diverse collection of biologists met at a symposium in Princeton and declared their acceptance of this synthesis. However, it was not yet complete. Developmental biologists did not accept that the theory explained their observations, and it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that molecular biology bridged