Yet nearly all evolutionary biologists, even those who do not agree with him, admire him. Williams was the first to emphasize that it was the gene on which natural selection acted. In this regard, he precedes Richard Dawkins, with whom he shares a great many ideas, and he is in a different camp from Stephen Jay Gould, who has a hierarchical theory of selection processes, of which the gene is only one level. Williams' book Adaptation and Natural Selection , published in 1966, was a treatise on what has become known as ultra-Darwinism. He is also widely read.
Paleontologists study the fossil record.
The questions they face concern such things as long-term patterns in the history of life, and the extinction of species over millions of years. He is often critical of the ultra-Darwinian views of mainstream evolutionists such as Williams and Dawkins. Because Gould is a prolific and gifted popularizer, the educated public, at least in America, assumes that his approach to evolutionary biology is the mainstream position. Richard Dawkins is considered by his peers to be the ultimate ultra-Darwinist. He is also a gifted writer, who is known for his popularization of Darwinian ideas as well as for original thinking on evolutionary theory.