Posted on 02/04/2005 11:03:08 AM PST by Borges
Ernst Mayr, a Harvard University evolutionary biologist called "the Darwin of the 20th century," has died, the school said Friday. He was 100.
A member of the Harvard faculty for more than half a century, Mayr was considered the world's most eminent evolutionary biologist. He almost single-handedly made the origin of species diversity the central question of evolutionary biology that it is today, Harvard said.
In an interview with The Boston Globe before his 100th birthday last year, Mayr said he always had "tremendous curiosity" and balked at suggestions he stop working.
"People say to me, Why don't you retire?' I say, 'My God, why should I retire? I enjoy what I'm doing,"' he told the Globe.
Through his travels in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, Mayr showed what Darwin had never quite established: that new species arise from isolated populations.
Mayr's death came amid renewed debate in the United States over the teaching of evolution. One Pennsylvania school district recently became the first in the country to begin teaching "intelligent design" -- an alternative to evolution that contends nature was created by an all-powerful being.
Born in 1904 in Kempten, Germany, Mayr earned a medical degree from the University of Greifswald in 1925. Descended from generations of doctors, he broke off his medical career and turned his attention to zoology, earning a doctorate from the University of Berlin just 16 months later.
"I was curious about far places," he told the Harvard Alumni Bulletin in 1961, "and decided that as an M.D., I should have but small chance of traveling."
He got the chance to do just that in 1927, when he met Lord Rothschild at a zoological convention in Budapest, Hungary. Rothschild had been looking for someone to travel to New Guinea to collect birds of paradise.
Mayr died Thursday at a retirement community outside of Boston after a short illness, Harvard said. He is survived by two daughters, five grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.
Ping!
He knew it was coming. He should have evolved before it was too late.
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yeah, cause that is why he died right? This guy may have been athiest, but evolution is not in itself "anti-God". I believe in both, I think your statement shows the "strength of your ignorance of such matters". Some would say it is anti-God to judge others.
WAR IS PEACE1984, by George Orwell
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
You'we welcome! :-)
I should have pinged you with that post.
A rare and telling acknowledgement. When as often happens I note that creationism relies heavily on bludgeoning with ignorance (the ignorance of the creationist, of course), the cries of "Personal attack!" ring from everywhere.
"instead find strength in my ignorance of such matters."
'ignorance' being the key word here.
"I'm smart enough to figure out that this all did not just happen"
Actually, it DID happen, else we wouldn't be reading this.
Beware the creationists/thought police.
I said "... the ignorance of the creationist."
You asked, "Are you implying that the Creator was ignorant??"
Thank you for an exquisite exposition of the fundamentalist Christian position on evolution. No supporter of the mainstream scientific position could express the weakness of the evolution-rejectors better.
If ignorance isn't bliss then you don't know what is.
A giant who will be missed.
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