Darwin’s Man in Brazil is a scientific biography of Fritz Müller that presents relevant familial, institutional, methodological, philosophical, and political backgrounds for understanding Müller’s career. It emphasizes Müller’s central importance to the development of evolutionary biology between 1860 and 1890 and West’s striking claim that, among Darwin’s correspondents, Müller was Darwin’s closest intellectual kin. In the 1840s Müller had excellent training in Germany in anatomy, botany, marine biology, natural history, physiology, and zoology. A free thinker who refused to sign the Christia ... More

Darwin’s Man in Brazil is a scientific biography of Fritz Müller that presents relevant familial, institutional, methodological, philosophical, and political backgrounds for understanding Müller’s career. It emphasizes Müller’s central importance to the development of evolutionary biology between 1860 and 1890 and West’s striking claim that, among Darwin’s correspondents, Müller was Darwin’s closest intellectual kin. In the 1840s Müller had excellent training in Germany in anatomy, botany, marine biology, natural history, physiology, and zoology. A free thinker who refused to sign the Christian oaths required of teachers in Prussia, Müller emigrated to Brazil in 1852 to become a pioneer farmer and conduct research on tropical biology. He built his farm from scratch in a German settlement in a primeval forest in Santa Catarina province. In the 1860s he reorganized his biological research to test Darwin’s theory of evolution and conducted field studies to answer questions generated from a Darwinian perspective. He was unique among natural historians in testing Darwin’s theory of natural selection by investigating an enormous diversity of plants and animals rather than a relatively narrow range of taxa. In correspondence, Müller and Darwin introduced new topics to each other and worked out how best to articulate and test various Darwinian claims. Müller’s extensive publications, correspondence, and interactions with Darwin demonstrate that natural history provided stronger support for Darwin’s theory than was hitherto recognized. They also illuminate the communication networks that enabled biologists living far from the European centers to make dramatic contributions to biological theory and practice in the nineteenth century.