Columbia University's Jesup Lectures were the starting point for many of the most important works of the modern evolutionary synthesis. The presenters introduced the connection between two important discoveries—the units of evolution (genes) with selection as the primary mechanism of evolution. In 1941, Edgar Anderson (whose work on hybridization in the genus "Iris" had interested Stebbins since they met in 1930) and Ernst Mayr co-presented the lecture series and Mayr later published his lectures as "Systematics and the Origin of Species". In 1946, Stebbins was invited on Dobzhansky's recommendation to present the prestigious lectures. Stebbins' lectures drew together the otherwise disparate fields of genetics, ecology, systematics, cytology, and paleontology. In 1950, these lectures were published as "Variation and Evolution in Plants", which proved to be one of the most important books in 20th-century botany. The book brought botanical science into the new synthesis of evolutionary theory, and became part of the canon of biological works written between 1936 and 1950 that formed the modern synthesis of evolution.