Mayr, Ernst 1904-2005

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Mayr, Ernst 1904-2005

PERSONAL:

Born July 5, 1904, in Kempten, Germany; died February 3, 2005 in Bedford, MA; son of Otto (a judge) and Helene Mayr; married Margarete Simon, May 4, 1935; children: Christa Elizabeth, Susanne. Education: Attended University of Greifswald, 1923-25; University of Berlin, Ph.D. (summa cum laude), 1926.

CAREER:

Biologist, educator, and writer. University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany, assistant curator of zoological museum, 1926-32; member of Rothschild expedition to Dutch New Guinea, 1928; member of expedition to mandated territory of New Guinea, 1928-29; member of Whitney South Sea expedition to Solomon Islands, 1929-30; American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, Whitney Research Associate in Ornithology, 1931-32, associate curator, 1932-44, curator, 1944-53; Columbia University, New York, NY, Jesup Lecturer, 1941; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, 1953-75, then emeritus, director of Museum of Comparative Zoology, 1961-70. Visiting professor, University of Minnesota, 1949, University of Pavia, Italy, 1951, and University of Washington, 1952; visiting lecturer at Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, 1947, and Columbia University, 1950-53. Vice president, 11th International Zoological Congress, 1958; president, 13th International Ornithological Congress, 1962. Also Messenger lecturer at Cornell University, 1985; Hitchcock professor at the University of California, 1987; and honorary fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh.

MEMBER:

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Ornithologists' Union (vice president, 1953-56; president, 1956-59), American Philosophical Society, American Society of Naturalists (president, 1962-63), American Society of Zoologists, Cooper Ornithological Society, Linnaen Society of New York (president), National Academy of Sciences (chair, section of zoology, 1961-64), New York Zoological Society, Society for the Study of Evolution (secretary, 1946; editor, 1947-49; president, 1950), Society of Systematic Zoology (president, 1966), Wilson Ornithological Society. Honorary member: Botanical Gardens of Indonesia, British Ornithological Union, La Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales, Linnean Society of London, Netherlands Ornithological Society, Ornithologishe Gesellschaft in Bayern, Royal Australian Ornithological Union, Royal Society of New Zealand, Societas Scientiarum Fennica (Finland), Society of Ornithologists (France), South African Ornithological Society, Zoological Society of India, Zoological Society of London.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Leidy Medal, 1946; Wallace Darwin Medal, 1958; Brewster Medal, 1965; Verrill Medal, 1965; National Medal of Science, 1970; Balzan Prize in Biology, 1983; Japan Prize, 1994; Benjamin Franklin medal, 1995, 1996; Lewis Thomas prize, 1998, for This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World; Crafoord Prize, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (corecipient), 1999; Golden Plate, American Academy of Achievement, 2001; establishment of the Ernst Mayr Lectureship of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie. Honorary Ph.D. from Uppsala University, 1957, and D.Sc. from Yale University and University of Melbourne, both 1959, Oxford University, 1966, and Harvard University, 1980, and D.Phil., University of Munich, 1968, Sorbonne, University of Paris, 1974, and University of Berlin, 2001.

WRITINGS:

List of New Guinea Birds, American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY), 1941.

Systematics and the Origin of Species, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1942, reprinted with a new introduction by the author published as Systematics and the Origin of Species, from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1999.

Birds of the Southwest Pacific, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1945, new edition published as Birds of the Southwest Pacific: A Field Guide to the Birds of the Area between Samoa, New Caledonia, and Micronesia, with a new preface by Jack L. Throp, Charles E. Tuttle, 1978.

Birds of Paradise, American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY), 1945.

(With Jean Delacour) Birds of the Philippines, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1946.

(Editor, with others) The Problem of Land Connections across the South Atlantic, with Special Reference to the Mesozoic (conference proceedings), American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY), 1952.

(With E.G. Linsley and R.L. Usinger) Methods and Principles of Systematic Zoology, McGraw (New York, NY), 1953.

(With E. Thomas Gilliard) The Birds of Central New Guinea: Results of the American Museum of Natural History Expeditions to New Guinea in 1950 and 1952, American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY), 1954.

Biological Materials, National Research Council (Washington, DC), 1956—.

(Editor) The Species Problem, American Association for the Advancement of Science (Washington, DC), 1957.

Animal Species and Evolution, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1963.

(Editor) Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (facsimile edition), Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1964.

(With W.H. Phelps) The Origin of the Bird Fauna of the South Venezuelan Highlands, American Museum of Natural History (New York, NY), 1967.

Principles of Systematic Zoology, McGraw (New York, NY), 1969, 2nd edition, 1991.

Populations, Species, and Evolution, Belknap Press (Cambridge, MA), 1970.

Evolution and the Diversity of Life, Belknap Press (Cambridge, MA), 1976.

(Editor) The Evolutionary Synthesis, Belknap Press (Cambridge, MA), 1980, new edition edited with William B. Provine and with a new introduction by Mayre published as The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1998.

The Growth of Biological Thought, Volume I, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1982.

Systematics and the Origin of Species, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1982.

Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1988.

(With Peter D. Ashlock) Principles of Systematic Zoology, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1991.

One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1991.

This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1997.

(With Jared Diamond) The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation, Dispersal, and Ecology, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2001.

What Evolution Is, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2001.

What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor of more than 700 articles to professional journals. Founding editor, Evolution (journal of Society for the Study of Evolution), 1947.

SIDELIGHTS:

Considered one of the twentieth century's most important evolutionary biologists, Ernst Mayr made major contributions to ornithology, evolutionary theory, and the history and philosophy of biology. He is best known for his work on speciation—how one species arises from another—and during his decades-long career Mayr published hundreds of articles and more than a dozen books. Through these writings, he not only clarified certain aspects of earlier scientific theories but proposed new theories which have changed the course of biological research.

Mayr was born on July 5, 1904, in Kempten, Germany, near the borders of Austria and Switzerland. He was one of three sons of Helene Pusinelli Mayr and Otto Mayr, a judge. As a boy Mayr enjoyed bird watching, and he received a broad education, including Latin and Greek. In 1923 he followed in the footsteps of several physicians in his family and began studying for a medical degree at the University of Greifswald. Within two years, however, he had become so enthralled with the evolutionary theories and the exploratory voyages of nineteenth-century British naturalist Charles Darwin that he switched from medicine to zoology. He moved to the University of Berlin, where he had once worked at the zoological museum during his summer vacation. In 1926 he received his Ph.D. in zoology, summa cum laude, from the university. Soon afterward, he became the zoological museum's assistant curator.

While still working at the museum, Mayr went to Budapest in 1928 to attend a zoological congress. There he met Lionel Walter Rothschild, a British baron and well-known zoologist. Impressed by the young man, Lord Rothschild asked Mayr to lead an ornithological expedition to Dutch New Guinea, in the southwestern Pacific. Mayr jumped at the chance. New Guinea at that time was extremely inaccessible, but Mayr was eager to investigate the birds of several remote mountain ranges. The trip was not easy, and Mayr's party suffered a variety of illnesses and injuries. But Mayr was undaunted and decided to remain in the region, making a second expedition sponsored by the University of Berlin to mountain ranges in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea. In 1929 and 1930 he participated in a third expedition, the American Museum of Natural History's Whitney South Sea Expedition to the Solomon Islands. The experiences and insights crowded into these few years in the South Pacific were to stimulate Mayr's thinking about biology and the development of species for decades to come.

When the expedition to the Solomons was over, Mayr was invited, in 1931, to be a Whitney research associate in ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In 1932 he was named associate curator of the museum's bird collection, and he decided to stay in the United States, eventually becoming an American citizen. Over the next decade he worked at identifying and classifying bird species, studying their geographical distribution and relationships. These years resulted in two of his most influential books.

Mayr published the first of these books in 1941, List of New Guinea Birds. This book is much more complex than its title might imply; it explores the ways closely related species can be distinguished from one another and how variations can arise within a species. In a short article in Science, Stephen Jay Gould called each species Mayr discusses in this book "a separate puzzle, a little exemplar of scientific methodology." In writing his List of New Guinea Birds, Gould observed, Mayr "sharpened his notion of species as fundamental units in nature and deepened his understanding of evolution."

While most biologists in the 1930s and 1940s accepted the broad premise of Darwin's theory about evolution—that species change and evolve through a process called natural selection, sometimes loosely called "the survival of the fittest"—there was little understanding of how the process worked. If the fittest members of an animal population were the ones that survived, where did those especially well adapted creatures come from in the first place? These questions were complicated during this period by the fact that there was no clear understanding of exactly what constituted a plant or animal species. Instead, there were two conflicting approaches: one school of thought tried to classify species by their shape and appearance, and another tried to identify species through their genes.

In December of 1939 Mayr attended a lecture series at Yale University given by a well-known geneticist named Richard Goldschmidt, who argued that new species can arise through sudden genetic mutation. Goldschmidt believed that these changes could take place within a single generation, and Mayr was appalled by what he heard. Fred Hapgood explained in Science 84: "What Mayr heard in those lectures seemed so wrong that he decided, in his own words, to ‘eliminate’ those ideas ‘from the panorama of evolutionary controversies.’" Mayr was convinced that extremely long periods of time were required for the development of a new species, and he set out to demolish Goldschmidt's argument.

The result was Systematics and the Origin of Species, which Mayr published in 1942. Based partly on what he had learned in the South Pacific, Mayr argued that geographic speciation is the basic process behind the formation of new species. This theory had been advanced more than a hundred years earlier—even before Darwin—but it had never taken hold. Mayr showed how the process works: when a few animals become separated from their original population and breed among themselves over a great many generations, they eventually change so much that they can no longer breed with their original group. For example, birds from the mainland who once settled on an island may look like their ancestors and will have many similar genetic traits, yet the two groups will not be able to interbreed. The island birds have then become a new species. This concept, which Mayr gradually elaborated, was to form the core of his thinking.

Mayr's ideas about speciation not only found general acceptance but won him great respect. Systematics and the Origin of Species has been called the "bible" of a generation of biologists. Noted Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson remembered how in this book Mayr offered him the "theoretical framework on which to hang facts and plan enterprises," as reported in Science 84. Wilson continued: "He gave taxonomy an evolutionary perspective. He got the show on the road."

Over the next several years, Mayr continued to expand and refine his ideas about speciation. In 1946 he founded the Society for the Study of Evolution, becoming its first secretary and later its president. In 1947 he founded the society's journal, Evolution, and served as its first editor. In 1953, at the age of forty-nine, he was named Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, and from 1961 to 1970 he directed the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology. During those years he brought about an important expansion of the museum, which is now a major center of biological research. By this time, Mayr was recognized as a leader of what has been called "the modern synthetic theory of evolution." In this context, he is often mentioned with three other eminent researchers in the field: George Gaylord Simpson, Theodosius Dobzhansky, and Julian Huxley. In 1963 Mayr cemented his reputation with Animal Species and Evolution, in which he wrote of man's place in the ecosystem.

In a 1983 interview in Omni, Mayr discussed many of the concerns he has expressed throughout his career: "Man must realize that he is part of the ecosystem and that his own survival depends on not destroying that ecosystem." The biologist nonetheless remained pessimistic about the future of the human race. Implicit in his work has been the firm belief that animal species, including the human one, do not improve toward some higher state as they evolve; they merely adapt to changing conditions. Though it might someday be possible to alter the human race by manipulating its genetic structure, Mayr finds this idea not only morally offensive but futile, since even with scientific advances there can never be any agreement about which genes are worth manipulating.

Still, Mayr has said, all this does not mean that humankind cannot improve; improvement must be through education and cultural advances. Writing in Scientific American, he pointed out that it is cultural evolution, not genetic changes, that has permitted the human species to fly more powerfully than birds, bats, or insects. He explained that cultural evolution "is a uniquely human process by which man to some extent shapes and adapts to his environment." Mayr went on to write: "Cultural evolution is a much more rapid process than biological evolution."

In 1975 Mayr retired from Harvard as emeritus professor of zoology. In his retirement, he continued to work intensely, and his interests continued to expand. He changed careers, as Gould observed; from a scientist he became a historian and philosopher of science. He undertook to write not only about evolution, but also about the entire history of biology. In 1982 he published The Growth of Biological Thought, intended as the first of two volumes. In 1991, at the age of eighty-seven, he published yet another carefully wrought discussion of evolution, One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought. In that book, he wrote: "The basic theory of evolution has been confirmed so completely that modern biologists consider evolution simply a fact." The author went on to write: "Where evolutionists today differ from Darwin is almost entirely on matters of emphasis. While Darwin was fully aware of the probabilistic nature of selection, the modern evolutionist emphasizes this even more. The modern evolutionist realizes how great a role chance plays in evolution." In 2001 Mayr's book What Evolution Is was published for a general audience unfamiliar with scientific theories. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Paul Raeburn found the book to be "a wise and illuminating account that sorts out the complexities of evolution with insight and an authority often lacking elsewhere." Pat Shipman, reviewing the book for the Los Angeles Times, described the work as providing a "glimpse of how a great evolutionist sees the grand and ever-changing scheme of life. For that alone, this book has earned its place on my bookshelf."

In an interview with Claudia Dreifus for the New York Times, the author explained why, at his age, he wrote such an expansive book as What Evolution Is: "The primary reason is that I was very unhappy with the books published by other people," noted Mayr. "There are huge books on evolution of 600, 800 pages, but there was not a book available that defended really the gist of evolutionary biology in a more or less accessible way for the average person." The author went on to comment: "Now this book was written by me when I was in my late 80's and in my 90's. And yet it has quite a lot of new ideas, which is unusual." The author also told Dreifus: "Somehow or other, I've no trouble coming up with new ideas."

Mayr had written another book a few years earlier, in 1997, in which he condensed the complicated history of biological thought. Titled This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World, the book received acclaim from other scientists as well as the prestigious Lewis Thomas Prize honoring the scientist as poet. In the book, Mayr promotes "a view of knowledge acquisition called evolutionary epistemology which suggests that human understanding evolves like life itself," as noted by a contributor to the Encyclopedia of World Biography.

This Is Biology also presents Mayr's vision of biology as being at the center of the sciences and an essential science that must be understood if humans are to address the major political and moral questions of the modern age. The author argues that the physical sciences do not address many parts of nature that are unique to life and that life cannot be reduced to fundamental laws of physics and chemistry. The author also presents the "life history" of biology as a discipline, beginning with its roots in the work of Aristotle on through its flowering with the work of Charles Darwin and then the rapid growth of discovery and understanding due to new molecular techniques for research. The author goes on to relate the study of biology with the study of humanities, such as ethics and history. In addition, he explores science in relation to theology and other systems of thought.

Doughlas H. Shedd, writing in the Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, noted: "Ernst Mayr's ability to define terms, large and small, in elegant, straightforward prose is one of the most significant achievements of This Is Biology." Shedd added in the same review: "Few people are in a better position than Mayr—a renowned biologist who has made unparal- leled contributions to our understanding of the evolutionary process—to define the term modern biology." Other reviewers also had high praise for the book. Noting that This Is Biology "presents a view and understanding of biology that serves the specialist in biology, the general scientist and the layperson alike," American Scientist contributor Walter J. Bock went on to write in his review: "The author presents a broad scope of biology covering more than two centuries, demonstrating an encyclopedic grasp of empirical facts and theoretical concepts of the life sciences." John H. Graham wrote in Ecology: "I would recommend this book for those who desire a better understanding of science in general, and of biology in particular. The writing is uniformly excellent."

Published the year before Mayr's death in 2005, What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline is a collection of revised and new essays written just before Mayr's one hundredth birthday. The essays cover a wide span of Mayr's career in biological thought. He offers insights into the history of evolutionary biology and also comments on ongoing issues in evolutionary theory. The essays include Mayr's exploration of Darwin's theory of evolution, in which he presents his belief that Darwin's theory is actually five different theories with their own history and impact. For example, he explains how natural selection is a separate theory from common descent, which is different from geographic speciation, and so on. He also explores how the confounding of these separate theories into one single, composite theory may be responsible for some of the longstanding controversies behind Darwin's theory of evolution. In another essay, the author presents his ideas of how humans evolved from monkeys, and he also explores the very nature of scientific revolutions."

In a review of What Makes Biology Unique?, BioScience contributor Richard E. Lenski commented: "Mayr ends with two chapters that reflect the intellectual vitality of an old man looking across the reaches of time and space. The penultimate chapter defends the importance of understanding human evolution, despite its difficulties, while the last chapter considers the search for extraterrestrial intelligence." While some reviewers, such as Lenski, felt that other books by Mayr present a better overall view of his theories about evolutionary biology and other subjects within the field of biology, the author also received widespread praise for his effort to pull together his thoughts over many years by combining old essays and contributions to journals with newer essays that add a cohesiveness to his thoughts. For example, Matthias Glaubrecht, writing in Science, noted: "Those unacquainted with Mayr's thinking will find the book an excellent firsthand overview of his philosophy of biology," adding later in the same review that "I admire his clear and elegant writing as well as his insights into biology and philosophy." David Wilson wrote in the American Scientist: "Mayr has a lean prose style that assumes no special knowledge and gets directly to the point. His acuity would be remarkable at any age."

Upon Mayr's death, several scientists were interviewed by Melissa Block for All Things Considered. Biologist Niles Eldridge told Block that Mayr "was a dominating figure; he was not always the nicest person in the world, but he was very strong and very clear about what he thought. And he kept it up for an awfully long time. And there's just very few figures you can point to that were at all like that in the 20th century." In an obituary for Mayr in the New York Times, Carol Kaesuk Yoon quoted evolutionary biologist Douglas J. Futuyma as noting: "No one will agree with all his positions, analyses, and opinions." However, Futuyma concluded, "anyone who has failed to read Mayr can hardly claim to be educated in evolutionary biology."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd edition, Gale (Farmington Hills, MI), 1998.

Hey, Jody, Walter M. Fitch, and Francisco Ayala, editors, Systematics and the Origin of Species: On Ernst Mayr's 100th Anniversary (symposium in honor of author), National Academies Press (Washington, DC), 2005.

Mayr, Ernst, One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1991.

Notable Scientists: From 1900 to the Present, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

American Scientist, March-April, 1998, Walter J. Bock, review of This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World, p. 186; March 1, 2005, David Wilson, "An Elder's View of a Young Theory," p. 184.

BioScience, December, 1999, "Distinguished Service Awards for 1999," p. 1029; August, 2005, Richard E. Lenski, "A Synthesizer's Parting Words: Ernst Mayr Reflects on Evolutionary Biology as Science," p. 697.

Ecology, October, 1997, John H. Graham, review of This Is Biology, p. 2273.

Evolution, February, 1994, Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, "Disciplining Evolutionary Biology: Ernst Mayr and the Founding of the Society for the Study of Evolution," p. 1; February, 1994, Douglas J. Futuyama, "Ernst Mayr and Evolutionary Biology," p. 36; February, 1994, Frank B. Gill, "Ernst Mayr, the Ornithologist," p. 12.

Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, spring, 1999, Douglas H. Shedd, review of This Is Biology, p. 123.

Isis, March, 1998, review of This Is Biology, p. 150.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 1997, review of This Is Biology, p. 124.

Kliatt, March, 1999, review of This Is Biology, p. 40.

Library Journal, November 1, 1999, review of This Is Biology, p. 52.

London Review of Books, October 2, 1997, review of This Is Biology, p. 37.

Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2002, Pat Shipman, "Evolution for Beginners?," p. R7.

Natural History, May, 1997, Natalie Angier, "Ernst Mayr at 93," p. 8.

Nature, June 19, 1997, review of This Is Biology, p. 772.

New Scientist, May 30, 1998, review of This Is Biology, p. 52.

New York Times, April 16, 2002, Claudia Dreifus, "An Insatiably Curious Observer Looks Back on a Life in Evolution," p. 2.

New York Times Book Review, July 13, 1997, review of This Is Biology, p. 24; December 16, 2001, Paul Raeburn, "An Evolving Idea: The eminent scientist Ernst Mayr Helps Sort Out the Complexities of Evolutionary Theory," p. 12.

Omni, February, 1983, "Interview: Ernst Mayr," pp. 73-78, 118-119.

Publishers Weekly, February 17, 1997, review of This Is Biology, p. 205.

Queen's Quarterly, summer, 2005, J.W. Grove, "More than Just a Hypothesis."

Science, January 20, 1984, Stephen Jay Gould, "Balzan Prize to Ernst Mayr," pp. 255-257; June 24, 1988, Francisco J. Ayala, review of Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, p. 1801; October 21, 1994, Ann Gibbons, "Ernst Mayr Wins the Japan Prize," p. 365; November 19, 1999, Nils Chr. Stenseth, review of The Evolutionary Synthesis, p. 1490; November 19, 1999, "The Evolutionary Synthesis," p. 1490; October 22, 2004, Matthias Glaubrecht, "A Centenarian's Summary," p. 614.

Science 84, June, 1984, Fred Hapgood, "The Importance of Being Ernst," pp. 40-46.

Science Books and Films, June, 1997, review of This Is Biology, p. 134.

Science News, September 18, 2004, review of What Makes Biology Unique? Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline, p. 191.

Scientific American, September, 1978, Ernst Mayr, "Evolution," pp. 47-55.

Scientist, November 17, 2003, Christine Bahls, "Ernst Mayr, Darwin's Disciple," p. 17.

SciTech Book News, September, 1997, review of This Is Biology, p. 42.

Skeptic, number 3, 1997, review of This Is Biology, p. 108; spring, 2005, "Ernst Mayr, 1904-2005 Remembrances and Tribute."

Times Literary Supplement, October 3, 1997, review of This Is Biology, p. 28.

Washington Post Book World, June 20, 1982, Frederic L. Holmes, review of The Growth of Biological Thought.

Whole Earth Review, summer, 1991, Steven Levy, review of The Growth of Biological Thought, p. 123.