The subfield of Darwin studies devoted to comparative reception coalesced around 1971 with the planning of a conference on the subject, at the University of Texas at Austin held in April 1972. The original focus was western Europe, Russia and the United States. Subsequently a spate of studies on the Italian reception added to the Eurocentric focus. The center of activity then switched to Latin America where a group of scholars coalesced in the mid 1990s, seemingly related to the maturation of the history of science as a discrete discipline there somewhat earlier. When interest in Europe revived during the last decade, the center of gravity had moved both eastward, to the former Society bloc countries (a reflection of the institutionalization of the history of science there), and north to Scandinavia. Recently, interest in the topic has emerged in the Islamic World. The subtext of the expansion of this topic is modernization.