title: Alfonso Luis Herrera and the Beginnings of Evolutionism and Studies in the Origin of Life in Mexico.
abstract: Alfonso Luis Herrera (1868-1942) was a Mexican biologist, and significant as the principal promoter of Darwinian thought in that country. However, Herrera's thinking went beyond the evolution of living beings, and extended to the question of the origin of life itself and the place of living phenomena in the larger context of the cosmos. Perhaps more significantly, though now largely forgotten, Herrera was among the first to embark on an experimental program to understand the origin of life, one which may be seen as foundational for later workers, most notably Sidney Fox and Alexander Oparin, and which has been resuscitated recently. We review here the development of Herrera's scientific thought on Darwinism and the origin of life and the context in which it developed.
authors.affiliation: Facultad de Estudios Superiores Iztacala de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Los Reyes Iztacala, 54090, Tlanepantla, Estado de México, Mexico.
authors.forename: Ismael
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Ledesma-Mateos
authors.affiliation: Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-IE-1 Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 152-8551, Japan. henderson.cleaves@gmail.com.|The Institute for Advanced Study, 1 Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA. henderson.cleaves@gmail.com.|Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, 1515 Gallatin St. NW, Washington, DC, 20011, USA. henderson.cleaves@gmail.com.|Center for Chemical Evolution, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA. henderson.cleaves@gmail.com.
authors.forename: H James
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4101-0654
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Cleaves
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D008800:Mexico; D000069497:Origin of Life; D012641:Selection, Genetic
keywords: Alfonso Herrera; Darwinism; History of evolution; Mexico; Origin of life