A Potted History
Darwin (1871, 1874) realised that the preponderance of unbiased sex ratios posed a problem for his theory of natural selection. He made a start at developing possible explanations, but was unsatisfied and left the problem for future generations. This problem was solved decisively by Fisher (1930), who showed that selection for an unbiased sex ratio follows from the fact each offspring has a mother and father, and so males and females make equal genetic contributions to the next generation. Importantly, Fisher clarified the frequency dependent nature of selection on sex allocation that is at the centre of all subsequent developments.
Read more about this topic: Sex Allocation
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“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)