[3] First published in 1930 by The Clarendon Press, it is one of the most important books of the modern synthesis,[4] and helped define population genetics.

Fisher attributed the fall of civilizations to the fertility of their upper classes being diminished, and used British 1911 census data to show an inverse relationship between fertility and social class, partly due, he claimed, to the lower financial costs and hence increasing social status of families with fewer children.

[11] Sewall Wright, who had many disagreements with Fisher, reviewed the book and wrote that it was "certain to take rank as one of the major contributions to the theory of evolution.

The work had a great effect on W. D. Hamilton, who discovered it as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge[15] and noted in these excerpts from the rear cover of the 1999 variorum edition: This is a book which, as a student, I weighed as of equal importance to the entire rest of my undergraduate Cambridge BA course and, through the time I spent on it, I think it notched down my degree.

Most chapters took me weeks, some months;...And little modified even by molecular genetics, Fisher's logic and ideas still underpin most of the ever broadening paths by which Darwinism continues its invasion of human thought.

Unlike in 1958, natural selection has become part of the syllabus of our intellectual life and the topic is certainly included in every decent course in biology.

The publication of the variorum edition in 1999 led to renewed interest in the work and reviews by Laurence Cook,[16] Brian Charlesworth,[17] James F. Crow,[18] and A. W. F.