Scottish geneticist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892–1964), along with Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890–1962) and Sewall Green Wright (1889–1988), developed population genetics. Among other contributions, Haldane’s famous book The Causes of Evolution (1932) was the first major work of what came to be known as the modern evolutionary synthesis. It made use of Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species by natural selection, presented in terms of the mathematical consequences of Gregor Mendel’s theory of genetics, to form the basis for biological inheritance.

Charles Darwin took into account Mendel’s ideas about genetics in forming his theory of evolution.