In the first half of the 19th century investigations began in the field of comparative and ontogenetic physiology, and the publication of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin became a further stimulus for the development of problems of evolutionary physiology. The term evolutionary physiology was coined by A. N. Severtzov in 1914, in the early 1930s the USSR created laboratories for the development of problems of evolutionary physiology. In 1956 L. A. Orbeli organized the Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology (Academy of Sciences of the USSR) in Leningrad. This paper discusses the problems of physiological paleontology, principles of the evolution of functions, regularities in functional evolution, and physiologic approaches to the origin of cell and life. © 2010 Pleiades Publishing, Ltd.