who came up with the idea of survival of the fittest
Survival of the fittest Herbert Spencer first used the phrase, after reading Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, in his Principles of Biology (1864), in which he drew parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin's biological ones: "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection', or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."[1]
Hugo de Vries Hugo Marie de Vries ForMemRS[1] (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɦyɣoː də ˈvris]; 16 February 1848 – 21 May 1935)[2] was a Dutch botanist and one of the first geneticists. He is known chiefly for suggesting the concept of genes, rediscovering the laws of heredity in the 1890s while unaware of Gregor Mendel's work, for introducing the term "mutation", and for developing a mutation theory of evolution.