August 1
st is Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck's birthday. He was more widely known as simply Jean-Baptiste Lemarck. Lemarck was the French biologist who developed the first theory of evolution called Lemarckism. Lemarckism was a popular theory of evolution where an organism passed on characteristics it collected during its lifetime to future generations. This was known as soft inheritance. Another aspect of inheritance was the idea of use and disuse. An organism would lose characteristics it didn't use anymore and develop ones that were useful. For example, giraffes grew longer necks to reach leaves at the tops of trees, and their children would have longer necks as well.
Lemarckism fell out of vogue when Darwin came on the scene. But Darwin and the later theories of Mendelian genetics haven't completely replaced it. Some scientists are applying the idea of soft inheritance to single celled organisms. Scientists have observed single celled organisms and prions develop new genetic structures apparently as a result of resistance to an environmental influence and then go on to pass that resistance on to future generations.
Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.
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