From the journal Nature today, evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr has died. Sad news:
Ernst Mayr dies, aged 100
Michael Hopkin
German-born biologist formulated the modern concept of species.
The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr died on 3 February at the age of 100, after a short illness. A hugely prolific writer and researcher, he was instrumental in developing modern ideas in evolutionary theory.As an ornithologist, Mayr classified many birds, most notably risking the hostile terrain of New Guinea to catalogue the region’s birds of paradise. But he will arguably be best remembered for formulating the concept of species that students still use today.
It was Mayr who defined a species as a group of individuals that are capable of breeding with one another, but not with others outside the group. This led to the idea that new species can arise when an existing species becomes separated into two populations that gradually become too distinct to interbreed; it was an answer to a biological conundrum that had eluded Charles Darwin.
Mayr was a brilliant man and a polymath, as evidenced by his graduate school record:The 23-year-old completed his Ph.D. in zoology in just eighteen months, which would be remarkable in itself, but he also simultaneously completed his pre-clinical studies at medical school. As one of Mayr’s graduate students says at the end of the piece, we won’t likely see Mayr’s like again in this age of large project teams: “Things have changed,” he says. “You can’t look at single people any more.”
This interview with Mayr from Edge.org is worth reading.
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