Alfonso Luis Herrera and the Beginnings of Evolutionism and Studies in the Origin of Life in Mexico

Ismael Ledesma-Mateos, H. James Cleaves

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.