Gavin Rylands de Beer: how embryology foreshadowed the dilemmas of the genome

Gavin de Beer is remembered, at best, as a shadowy figure among those who gradually built up our current view of evolution and the role of genetics. This view derives from the Modern Synthesis - the recognition that emerged in the 1930s that genetics can adequately explain Darwinian evolution and speciation through natural selection. I argue that de Beer's theories of embryology had a crucial role in the Modern Synthesis, and that his work indirectly continues to influence how we think about the genome, evolution and developmental biology.