List of important publications in biology

Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon

 * Ibn al-Nafis
 * Ibn al-Nafis, Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon, 1242.

Description: The Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon was the first publication to describe the pulmonary circulation and coronary circulation of the blood, which form the basis of the circulatory system. The book developed a new system of anatomy and physiology to replace the previous Avicennian and Galenic doctrines as advocated in The Canon of Medicine, while discrediting many of their erroneous theories on the four humours, pulsation, bones, muscles, intestines, sensory organs, bilious canals, esophagus, stomach, and the anatomy of almost every other part of the human body.

Importance: Breakthrough, Influence, Topic creator

De humani corporis fabrica

 * Vesalius
 * Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica, 1543.

Gray's Anatomy

 * Henry Gray
 * Henry Gray, Henry Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body, 1858.
 * Online version 1918, list of topics.

Description: Henry Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body, commonly known as Gray's Anatomy, is an anatomy textbook widely regarded as a classic work on human anatomy. The book was first published under the title Gray's Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical in Great Britain in 1858, and the following year in the United States. The book's British author died after the publication of the 1860 second edition, at the age of 34, but his much-praised book was continued by others and on November 24, 2004, the 39th British edition was released.

Importance: Influence, Introduction

Kitab al-Jami fi al-Adwiya al-Mufrada

 * Ibn al-Baitar, 13th century
 * Kitab al-Jami fi al-Adwiya al-Mufrada (Arabic: كتاب الجمع في الأدوية المفردة)

Description: The Kitab al-Jami fi al-Adwiya al-Mufrada is considered one of the greatest botanical compilations, and was a botanical authority for centuries. It contains details on at least 1,400 different plants, of which 200 of these plants were his own original discoveries. The Kitab al-Jami fi al-Adwiya al-Mufrada was also influential in Europe after it was translated into Latin in 1758.

Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Influence

Species Plantarum

 * Carolus Linnaeus, 1753
 * online at gallica

Description: A two-volume work, going through many editions (ever expanding), listing all plants then known, made accessible by an ordering in (artificial) classes and orders, and giving every listed species a two-part name (Binomial nomenclature or Binary name). With this book anybody, by counting the male and female parts present in a flower, could get to a listing of the genera the plant in question belongs to. This is the prime staring point of botanical nomenclature. It was also the starting point of a great upsurge in the popularity of Science. Arguably the most important publication in systematic biology ever. Without Linnaeus there might have been no Darwin.

Importance: Breakthrough, Influence

Molecular Biology of the Cell

 * Alberts, Bruce; Johnson, Alexander; Lewis, Julian; Raff, Martin; Roberts, Keith; Walter, Peter
 * New York, Garland Publishing, 2002
 * ISBN 0815332181

Description: A comprehensive introduction to cell and molecular biology, at both undergraduate and beginning graduate levels. There is a free Online version. Importance: This has long been the standard introduction to cell biology.

Genomic Regulatory Systems: Development and Evolution

 * E. H. Davidson
 * Genomic Regulatory Systems: Development and Evolution (Academic Press, San Diego, CA, 2001).

Description An important work based on a lifetime of solid research in developmental biology. The book is unique because it attempts to give a semi formal theory of regulatory networks as the basis of developmental biology. Importance: Impact


 * Developmental Biology (Sinauer Press), Scott Gilbert

Systems Developmental Biology
Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2005).
 * G. Forgacs and S. A. Newman

Description The first book to present an account of the full scope of embryonic development of vertebrate and invertebrate organisms on the basis of modern condensed matter physics and dynamical systems theory. Includes a chapter on the evolution of developmental mechanisms.

Multicellular Systems Biology
In silico multicellular systems biology and minimal genomes, Drug Discovery Today. 2003 December 15;8(24):1121-7.
 * E. Werner

Description An alternative approach to dynamical systems theory. Describes a new paradigm for understanding genomes in the development of organisms.

Biotic community
Description: This book turned descriptive faunistic/floristic biogeography in a new discipline, ecology. Based on his botanical investigations from Tropics to tundra, Warmings aim was to explain how similar environmental challenges (drought, flooding, cold, salt, herbivory etc.) was solved by plants in similar ways everywhere in the World, despite the different decent of species on different continents.
 * Eugenius Warming
 * Eug Warming. Plantesamfund- Grundtræk af den økologiske Plantegeografi (in Danish). P.G. Philipsens Forlag, Copenhagen. 335 pp. English edition Oecology of Plants: An Introduction to the Study of Plant Communities (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1909).

Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough.

Competitive exclusion

 * Georgii Frantsevich Gause
 * G. F. Gause. The struggle for existence, 1936. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins.

Description: In this book Gause formulated his Competitive exclusion principle, through experiments involving Paramecium. The principle holds that no two species can co-exist for long if they have to compete for highly similar resources. This outcome has two preconditions: 1) panmixis of individuals of competing species, 2) the environment is homogeneous in time and space. These conditions may be met with by aquatic microorganisms grown under laboratory conditions. However, in most real-world biotic communities, both conditions are likely to be violated from moderately to strongly. Due to its simplicity and intuitivness, Gause's Competitive exclusion principle has a great impact on subsequent ecological thinking.

Importance: Topic creator.
 * G. Evelyn Hutchinson
 * Hutchinson, G. E. (1959). "Homage to Santa Rosalia or why are there so many kinds of animals?" American Naturalist, 93, 145-159.

Description: Hutchinson's 1959 paper went a long way to understanding community assembly in ecosystems, in addition to solving an apparent violation of competitive exclusion. His studies of Corixidae lead to the discovery of 1:1.3 Hutchinson ratio that is ubiquitous in all community systems involving the co-existence of two niche-similar predatorial species. The size ratio difference is what permits their co-existence despite the degree of niche-overlap, and formed the basis for the limiting similarity theory - one of the most important contributions to Community Ecology to date.

Importance: Topic creator.

Ecological niche

 * Joseph Grinnell
 * Grinnell, J. (1917). "The Niche relationship of the California Thrasher", Auk, 34, 427-433.

Description: This is the paper in which the concept of the Ecological niche was first developed. Although Joseph Grinnell viewed the species habitat as being analogous to its niche, which is not how niches are perceived today, it still represented a significant contribution as it got his contemporary Ecologists thinking in such a way that lay the foundations for modern day Ecology.

Importance: Topic creator, Impact.


 * G. Evelyn Hutchinson
 * Hutchinson, G. E. (1957). "Concluding remarks, Cold Spring Harbor Symposium." Quant. Biol, 22, 415-427.

Description: In Hutchinson's 1957 address, for the first time in ecology, a strongly quantitative method for understanding the relationship between a species, its ecosystem and the environment at large is developed. Even if today Hutchinson's niche concept (or even the relevance of niches to ecology in general) is disputed, he fundamentally changed the orientation of ecology away from a qualitative science towards a strongly quantitative one. Hutchinson is thusly considered by many as the father of modern ecology.

Importance: Breakthrough.

Demography
Description: Harper's monograph on the population biology of plants was groundbreaking in turning the focus of (plant) ecologists to empirically observable demographic processes with direct relevance to selection and Darwinian fitness, such as natality, mortality and reproductive value.
 * John L. Harper
 * Harper, J.L. 1977. The Population Biology of Plants. Academic Press, London.

Ecological strategies
Description: This monograph was seminal in many ways, but it also contained the formulation of r/K selection theory, which posits that two contrasted directions in life-history selection will occur in crowded and un-crowded communities, respectively: K- or interaction selection in the former and r- or exploitation selection in the latter.
 * Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson
 * MacArthur,R.H. & Wilson,E.O. (1967) The theory of island biogeography. Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ.

Importance: Topic creator. Grime, P. 1979. Plant Strategies and Vegetation Processes. Wiley and Sons, Chichester. (2nd edn 2001) Description: Grime added a third fundamental strategy, namely selection for survival in stressfull environments. Grime's RCS theory (for Competition, Stress, Ruderal) addresses life-history evolution and of community assembly. It was presented in the context of plants, but has been widely accepted i animal ecology as well.
 * J. Philip Grime
 * Grime, J.P. (1974) Vegetation classification by reference to strategies. Nature, 250, 26-31.

Importance: Topic creator, breakthrough.

History of Insects
Description: This book tries to cover the whole extent of the history of the insects in time and space. Importance: By a leader in the paleotology of insects.
 * Rasnitsyn, A.P.
 * Quicke, D.L.J.
 * Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002

Souvenirs entomologiques

 * Jean-Henri Fabre
 * His works

Description: Fabre investigated insects, both at the anatomical level and the behavioral level.

Histoire Naturelle

 * Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
 * 1749-1788

Description: Until the publication of this encyclopedia much of the scientific community thought that all animals were created together by God before about 6,000 years. Not only did this 44 volume encyclopedia contained all descriptive biological knowledge of its time, it offered a new theory. 100 years before Darwin, Buffon claimed that man and ape might have a common ancestor. His work also had significant impact on ecology.

Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Impact

On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection
Description: In September 1838 Charles Darwin conceived his theory of natural selection as the cause of evolution, then as well as developing his career as a naturalist worked privately on finding evidence and answering possible objections, circulating essays written in 1842 and 1844 to his friends. Wallace, who was corresponding with Darwin from Borneo, arrived independently at the same theory. He wrote his paper On The Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type in February 1858 and sent it to Darwin, who received it on 18 June 1858 and passed it to Lyell and Hooker. They arranged for a joint publication of Wallace's paper and an extract from Darwin's 1844 essay; this was read to the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858, and printed in the ''Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Zoology 3'': 46-50. It had little impact at the time, but spurred Darwin to write an "abstract" of the "big book" Natural Selection he was then working on; this condensed version was published in November 1859 as On the Origin of Species.
 * Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
 * 1858
 * On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection
 * Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London. Zoology 3: 46-50.
 * On The Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type

Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough

The Origin of Species

 * Charles Darwin
 * On the Origin of Species, John Murray, London, 1859.
 * Retrieved on 2007-01-14
 * Origin of Species, 6th Edition (text)

Description: The Origin of Species is one of the hallmark works of biology. In this shortened abstract of his intended "big book" on Natural Selection, Darwin details his theory that organisms gradually evolve through a process of natural selection, and this process leads to the formation of new species. It was first published on November 24, 1859 and the initial print run was oversubscribed by booksellers at Murray's Autumn sale the day before. Darwin presents a theory of natural selection that is in most aspects identical to the theories now accepted by scientists. He carefully argues out this theory by presenting accumulated scientific evidence from his voyage on the Beagle in the 1830s, and from his continuing studies up to the date of publication. His studies continued, with the book being revised accordingly, the most extensive revisions being to the 6th and final edition.

Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Impact

The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection

 * Ronald Fisher
 * The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, Oxford University Press; 1930, New Ed edition (May 1, 2000) ISBN 0-19-850440-3.

Description: This book discusses Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection

Importance: Impact--this has been the basis for population genetics.

The Evolution of Individuality

 * Leo W. Buss
 * 1987, The Evolution of Individuality, Princeton University Press.

Description: In his book that examines the cell lineage as a unit of selection, Leo Buss addresses the evolutionary conflict between the individuality of cells that make up a metazoan and the metazoan individual itself. In elaborating this idea he presents numerous hypotheses regarding the evolution of animal development and life cycles. He wraps it up by addressing hierarchical organization in biology. It is one of the first texts addressing the idea of the individual in biology, integrating multilevel selection theory (from the macroevolutionists and gene selectionists) with developmental and cell biology. Though heavy on the theory and rather light on the evidence, for anyone interested in evo-devo or macroevolution this should be an essential read.

Importance: Topic creator, influence

Ontogeny and Phylogeny

 * Stephen Jay Gould
 * 1977, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Harvard University Press

Description: Critically revisits Haeckel's idea that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." Gould presents heterochrony as a concept that allows us to describe the majority of developmental processes in evolution. This book played a significant role at the time by bringing the evolutionary biology community back to examine developmental biology, ignored for many years. Importance: Influence

Experiments on Plant Hybridization

 * Gregor Mendel
 * Proceedings of the Natural History Society, 1866.
 * Online version

Description: Experiments on Plant Hybridization was the result after years spent studying genetic traits in pea plants. In his paper, Mendel compared seven discrete traits. Through experimentation, Mendel discovered that one inheritable trait would invariably be dominant to its recessive alternative. This model, later known as Mendelian inheritance or Mendelian genetics, provided an alternative to blending inheritance, which was the prevailing theory at the time.

Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Impact

The Microbial World

 * Roger Y. Stanier, Michael Doudoroff; Edward A Adelberg
 * First ed.,Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1957 OCLC 371122. (2nd ed, 1963, 3rd. ed., 1970, 4th ed. 1976)
 * Importance Classic 20th century textbook,

Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids

 * Francis Crick, James D. Watson
 * Nature (journal)171, 737-738 (1953)
 * Online version (Original text)

Description: Discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule. Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Impact

DNA Sequencing with Chain-Terminating Inhibitors

 * Frederick Sanger, S. Nicklen, and A. R. Coulson
 * PNAS, vol. 74, no. 12, p. 5463-5467 (1977)
 * (Original text)

Description: The basis of the DNA sequencing technique. (Sanger won his second Nobel prize on the basis of this discovery) Importance: Breakthrough, Impact

Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual

 * original edition, 1982: E.F.Fritsch, Joe Sambrook, Tom Maniatis
 * second edition, 1989: Joe Sambrook, E.F.Fritsch, Tom Maniatis
 * third edition, 2001: David W. Russell, Joe Sambrook
 * manual published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press
 * Official website of the book

Description: The manual (to which is often referred simply as the Maniatis) is universally recognized as the best manual for molecular biology techniques. The theory behind the techniques is also discussed in details. It is cited by thousands of publications. Importance: Impact

RNA interference

 * article: Potent and specific genetic interference by double-stranded RNA in Caenorhabditis elegans.
 * authors: Fire A, Xu S, Montgomery MK, Kostas SA, Driver SE, Mello CC.
 * published in Nature
 * abstract
 * Full text of the manuscript in PDF

Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth

 * Andrew H. Knoll
 * 2003, Princeton University Press.

Description: A very readable yet complete introduction to the early evolution of life.

Importance: Introduction.

Phylogenetic Systematics

 * Willi Hennig
 * University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1966.

Description: This book popularized the techniques of cladistics in the English-speaking world. It is based on work published in German starting 1950. Willi Hennig is considered the founder of cladistics, which he developed while working as an entomologist in East Germany.

Importance: The origin of the subject; lasting influence

Inferring Phylogenies

 * Joseph Felsenstein
 * Sinauer Associates, 2004.

Description: An excellent technical manual to guide any biologist wishing to construct a phylogenetic hypothesis.

Importance: Possibly the most complete and authoritative work published on phylogenetics to date.

Phylogenetics

 * Charles Semple and Mike Steel
 * Oxford Lecture Series in Mathematics and Its Applications, 2003
 * ISBN 0198509421

Description: Introduction to the mathematical theory behind phylogenetic methods, both for biologists and for mathematicians, statisticians, and computer scientists--this is an emerging area of discrete mathematics.

Importance: A useful monograph on the mathematics of phylogenetic methods.

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis

 * Wilson, E. O
 * Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1975.

Description: Wilson introduced the term sociobiology as an attempt to explain the evolutionary mechanics behind social behaviors such as altruism, aggression, and nurturance. Wilson's book sparked one of the great scientific controversies in biology of the 20th century.

Importance:

How the Mind Works

 * Pinker, S.
 * How the Mind Works (ISBN 0-393-31848-6)

Description: A synthesis of many of the ideas of Evolutionary Psychology. This field posits that there are insights into the way that the mind works if you view our cognitive capabilities as the adaptive result of evolution.

Importance: Synthesizes the work of many Evolutionry Psychologsists and provides a comprehensive starting point for inquiries into (exactly as the title states) how the mind works.

The Meaning of Systems Biology

 * Marc W. Kirschner
 * Cell, Vol. 121, 503 – 504, May 20, 2005

Description: A brief justification for systems biology.

Importance:

Systema Naturae
Description: The starting point of zoological nomenclature, and the binomen. Follows the similar starting point for plants in 1753.
 * Carolus Linnaeus
 * First published: 10th edition 1758

Importance: Impact

History of Animals

 * Aristotle
 * 350 BC
 * The history of animals

Description: A work in which Aristotle describes the anatomy of organisms, with a particular emphasis on morphology. Consists of ten books of facts and descriptions. Many claim the book seems unscientific by today's standards.

Importance: Topic creator, Impact

Naturalis Historia

 * Gaius Plinius Secundus
 * 70
 * Naturalis Historia

Description: Encyclopedia of nature. It included many areas that are not considered to be part of nature sciences today - from geography, botany, zoology to painting. The encyclopedia was also novel with respect to its structure. It was to first book to use references, table of contents and tables of animals characteristics.

Importance: Impact

The Natural History of Selborne

 * Gilbert White
 * 1813
 * The letters

Description: In these letters, White published his observations on birds and many other aspects of the natural world that he observed near where he lived.

Importance: Impact