Group selection accustomed to group selection thinking that he did not realize his views "contravened orthodox Darwinian theory". The ethologist Niko Tinbergen praised Lorenz for his interest in the survival value of behavior, and naturalists enjoyed Lorenz's writings for the same reason. In 1962, group selection was used as a popular explanation for adaptation by the zoologist V. C. Wynne-Edwards. In 1976, Richard Dawkins wrote a well-known book on the importance of evolution at the level of the gene or the individual, "The Selfish Gene". From the mid 1960s, evolutionary biologists argued that natural selection acted primarily at the level of the
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection wrote that it was "certain to take rank as one of the major contributions to the theory of evolution." J. B. S. Haldane described it as "brilliant." Reginald Punnett was negative, however. The book was largely overlooked for 40 years, and in particular Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection was misunderstood. The work had a great effect on W. D. Hamilton, who discovered it as an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge and noted in these excerpts from the rear cover of the 1999 variorum edition: The publication of the variorum edition in 1999 led to renewed interest in the