In Memoriam. Having been immersed in work the last few days, I was unaware that Ernst Mayr died Thursday. From the viewpoint of someone trained as a vertebrate evolutionary biologist, Mayr was one of the most important figures of 20^th century biology. Along with Theodosius Dobzhansky and George Gaylord Simpson, Mayr was a principal architect of the Modern Synthesis, the basic framework upon which current evolutionary theory is based. (Okay, geneticists would probably add R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright to that list as well.)

He was fantastically productive, publishing books well into his 90's. For me, his 1963 "Animal Species and Evolution" was a book of historical importance, right up there with "On the Origin of Species"; it summarized Neo-Darwinian thought and what was then known about evolutionary processes in vertebrates better than any other source. While it has been in many ways superceded by more recent work, it lays out the foundation with enviable clarity. What is now the generic "textbook view" of evolution, for better or worse, is basically what Mayr laid out in 1963. The standard answer to the deceptively simple question, "What is a species?" is Mayr's.

I had the honor of meeting Mayr, once, in the mid-1980's. He was in his 80's, and still highly involved in the debates of the time. It was shortly after Stephen Gould had begun pounding his drum for the idea of punctuated equilibria; I remember Mayr remarking with a trace of irritation that Gould was, in essence, just writing footnotes to Mayr's own views. (Gould and his colleagues disputed this, obviously.) Despite his age, he could still argue with force and clarity. Mayr was probably the greatest influence on those scientists who were my mentors; had I not exiled myself, he would have been a profound influence on my academic work as well.

Posted by David Fleck at 05 February 2005 09:40 AM