Soren Løvtrup (1922–2002) was a
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
embryologist
Embryology (from Greek ἔμβρυον, ''embryon'', "the unborn, embryo"; and -λογία, ''-logia'') is the branch of animal biology that studies the prenatal development of gametes (sex cells), fertilization, and development of embryos and ...
and
historian of science
The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal.
Science's earliest roots can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopo ...
in the Department of
Animal Physiology
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical a ...
at the
Umeå University
Umeå University ( sv, Umeå universitet; Ume Sami language, Ume Sami: ) is a public university, public research university located in Umeå, in the mid-northern region of Sweden. The university was founded in 1965 and is the fifth oldest within ...
,
Sweden. Løvtrup was known for his
macromutation theory of evolution, which was in opposition to traditional
neo-Darwinism
Neo-Darwinism is generally used to describe any integration of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics. It mostly refers to evolutionary theory from either 1895 (for the combinations of Dar ...
. In 1987, Løvtrup published his controversial book ''Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth'' which challenged
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
's role as the intellectual founder of evolutionary theory and accused
Darwin
Darwin may refer to:
Common meanings
* Charles Darwin (1809–1882), English naturalist and writer, best known as the originator of the theory of biological evolution by natural selection
* Darwin, Northern Territory, a territorial capital city i ...
of
plagiarism
Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and though ...
.
Career
Løvtrup was born in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
. In 1945, he enrolled at
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...
, where he obtained a master's degree in
biochemistry
Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology ...
. He worked at
Carlsberg Laboratory
The Carlsberg Research Laboratory is a private scientific research center in Copenhagen, Denmark under the Carlsberg Group. It was founded in 1875 by J. C. Jacobsen, the founder of the Carlsberg brewery, with the purpose of advancing biochemi ...
, until 1953 when he received a PhD in
embryology
Embryology (from Greek ἔμβρυον, ''embryon'', "the unborn, embryo"; and -λογία, '' -logia'') is the branch of animal biology that studies the prenatal development of gametes (sex cells), fertilization, and development of embryos an ...
. He also worked at
University of Gothenburg
The University of Gothenburg ( sv, Göteborgs universitet) is a university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current Swedish universities and with 37,000 students and 6000 s ...
. From 1965, he worked at
Umeå University
Umeå University ( sv, Umeå universitet; Ume Sami language, Ume Sami: ) is a public university, public research university located in Umeå, in the mid-northern region of Sweden. The university was founded in 1965 and is the fifth oldest within ...
in Sweden as professor of animal
physiology
Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemic ...
.
Research
''Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth''
Løvtrup is best known for his book ''Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth'' (1987). In this controversial work, he claimed that
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biolog ...
was the real founder of evolution and that
natural selection
Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Cha ...
was discovered by
Erasmus Darwin
Erasmus Robert Darwin (12 December 173118 April 1802) was an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave-trade abolitionist, inventor, and poet.
His poem ...
,
Patrick Matthew
Patrick Matthew (20 October 1790 – 8 June 1874) was a Scottish grain merchant, fruit farmer, forester, and landowner, who contributed to the understanding of horticulture, silviculture, and agriculture in general, with a focus on maintaining th ...
and other naturalists before
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
. The book supports the ideas of early evolutionary thinkers such as
Karl Ernst von Baer
Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer Edler von Huthorn ( – ) was a Baltic German scientist and explorer. Baer was a naturalist, biologist, geologist, meteorologist, geographer, and is considered a, or the, founding father of embryology. He was a ...
,
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire
Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (15 April 177219 June 1844) was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories. ...
and
St. George Jackson Mivart
St. George Jackson Mivart (30 November 1827 – 1 April 1900) was an English biologist. He is famous for starting as an ardent believer in natural selection who later became one of its fiercest critics. Mivart attempted to reconcile Da ...
.
[Thomson, Keith Stewart. (1988). ''Darwinism: Refutation of a Myth by Søren Løvtrup''. '' American Scientist''. Vol. 76, No. 4. pp. 394-395.][Smith, Hobart M. (1989). ''The Myth is Not Evolution. Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth by Soren Lovtrup''. '']Evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
''. Vol. 43, No. 3. pp. 699-700. He was a critic of
gradualism
Gradualism, from the Latin ''gradus'' ("step"), is a hypothesis, a theory or a tenet assuming that change comes about gradually or that variation is gradual in nature and happens over time as opposed to in large steps. Uniformitarianism, increment ...
and the
punctuated equilibrium
In evolutionary biology, punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a theory that proposes that once a species appears in the fossil record, the population will become stable, showing little evolutionary change for most of i ...
theory of evolution.
Løvtrup argued against the
micromutation theory of the
modern evolutionary synthesis
Modern synthesis or modern evolutionary synthesis refers to several perspectives on evolutionary biology, namely:
* Modern synthesis (20th century), the term coined by Julian Huxley in 1942 to denote the synthesis between Mendelian genetics and s ...
and promoted his own theory of macromutation (
saltational evolution
Mutationism is one of several alternatives to evolution by natural selection that have existed both before and after the publication of Charles Darwin's 1859 book ''On the Origin of Species''. In the theory, mutation was the source of novelty, c ...
). Biologist
Bruce Wallace gave the book a mixed review, stating that Løvtrup was advocating a minority position in evolutionary biology and he "underestimates existing genetic variation, consequently, he favors evolutionary events that occur rarely even on a geologic time scale."
Herpetologist
Hobart Muir Smith
Hobart Muir Smith, born Frederick William Stouffer (September 26, 1912 – March 4, 2013), was an American herpetologist. He is credited with describing more than 100 new species of American reptiles and amphibians. In addition, he has been ...
wrote that the book with its sensationalist title would be highjacked by
creationists
Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 't ...
but it is not against the
fact of evolution, only against the Darwinian interpretation. Smith concluded "Certainly the book will strike many as controversial, but Løvtrup has given the world a truly epochal, introspective analysis of inestimable potential value."
Science historian
Keith Stewart Thomson
Keith Stewart Thomson (born 1938; B.SC. Birmingham, AM, Ph.D. Harvard) was from 2003 to 2012 a senior research fellow of the American Philosophical Society and is, starting in 2012, the Executive Officer of the American Philosophical Society and is ...
gave the book a negative review commenting "Many of the sacred cows that Løvtrup wants to slaughter are either long since dead or merely made of straw. It is tedious to constantly to see Darwin and his followers taken to task for failing to be as smart as we are now."
The book was criticized for providing no solid evidence for macromutations, Løvtrup only cited two alleged cases in his book.
Other works
Løvtrup's book ''Epigenetics'' (1974) was a work on
theoretical biology
Mathematical and theoretical biology, or biomathematics, is a branch of biology which employs theoretical analysis, mathematical models and abstractions of the living organisms to investigate the principles that govern the structure, development a ...
which attempted to present a unifying theory of
epigenesis. Biologist
Clifford Grobstein Clifford may refer to:
People
*Clifford (name), an English given name and surname, includes a list of people with that name
*William Kingdon Clifford
*Baron Clifford
*Baron Clifford of Chudleigh
*Baron de Clifford
*Clifford baronets
*Clifford fami ...
wrote that the book was a mixture of ideas, "sometimes illuminating, sometimes naïve, sometimes superficial, sometimes sophisticated, sometimes enormously detailed."
He contributed a paper on his alternative evolutionary views to the book ''Alternative Life-History Styles of Animals'' (1990).
[Kaplan, Robert H. (1990). ''Alternative Life-History Styles of Animals by Michael N. Bruton''. '']Copeia
''Ichthyology & Herpetology'' (formerly ''Copeia'') is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research in ichthyology and herpetology that was originally named after Edward Drinker Cope, a prominent American researcher in these fie ...
''. Vol. 1990, No. 1, pp. 248-250.
Publications
*''Studies on Amphibian Embryogenesis'' (1953)
*''Epigenetics: A Treatise on Theoretical Biology'' (1974)
*''The Phylogeny of Vertebrates'' (1977)
*''Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth'' (1987)
Personal life
He married
Ebba Lund, (a
Danish Resistance fighter and later a microbiologist and chemicale engineer) in 1944 and they had three children Vita (1945), Susanne (1948) and Anders (1951) before divorcing in 1959.
See also
*
Mutationism
Mutationism is one of several alternatives to evolution by natural selection that have existed both before and after the publication of Charles Darwin's 1859 book ''On the Origin of Species''. In the theory, mutation was the source of novelty, cr ...
*
Richard Goldschmidt
Richard Benedict Goldschmidt (April 12, 1878 – April 24, 1958) was a German-born American geneticist. He is considered the first to attempt to integrate genetics, development, and evolution. He pioneered understanding of reaction norms, gene ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lovtrup, Soren
1922 births
2002 deaths
Carlsberg Laboratory staff
Embryologists
Mutationism
Umeå University alumni
University of Copenhagen alumni