Mayr, Ernst
American Biologist and Ornithologist 1904-
Ernst Mayr, one of the cofounders of the "Modern Synthesis" in evolutionary biology (along with Theodosius Dobzhansky, George Gaylord Simpson, and G. Ledyard Stebbins), is a naturalized American citizen born in Kempten, Germany. The Modern Synthesis sought to integrate CharlesDarwin's theory of natural selection with the recent development of population genetics by R. A. Fisher, Sewall Wright, and J. B. S. Haldane.
Ernst Mayr attempted to synthesize the natural selection theory and population genetics.Mayr showed an ardent interest in birds from an early age and took only eighteen months to complete his doctoral program in ornithology at the Berlin Natural History Museum (1926). In 1928 he began leading a series of ornithological expeditions to New Guinea, the Philippines, and the Solomon Islands. His field guides to the birds of these areas continue to be used by scholars of ornithology.
After his Pacific forays, Mayr joined the staff of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City in 1931 and was appointed curator of its ornithology collection in 1932, a position he would hold for over twenty years. During this time, he described twenty-six new bird species and 410 subspecies. In the style of Darwin, his intellectual hero, Mayr used his accumulated knowledge of natural history to gain insight into broad evolutionary questions. His work at AMNH focused on systematics: the classification, genealogy, and defining boundaries of species and populations. Mayr's classic "biological species concept" won wide acceptance among scientists in its time, and continues to structure many scientist's thinking about species: "species are groups of actually (or potentially) interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups." This definition has led to the identification of many previously unknown species. Mayr's contribution to systematics is reflected in two seminal works: Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942), where the biological species concept was presented, and Methods and Principles of Systematic Zoology (1953).
Mayr left AMNH in 1953 to become the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, a position he still holds today as emeritus faculty; in 1961, he was appointed director of the museum. At Harvard, Mayr shifted his intellectual focus from systematics to speciation (how species are formed) and other general questions in evolutionary biology. He published Animal Species and Evolution, a major synthesis of evolutionary theory, in 1963. Mayr has been a leading advocate of population thinking—the notion that species are best understood by taking into account the fact that traits vary among individuals—in the classification and study of living things. According to Mayr, speciation typically occurs as a result of geographic separation, and therefore from a reduction of gene flow, between large parent populations and small founder populations.
Mayr is an eminent scholar in the history of evolutionary biology, and his recent career is marked by two major works on the subject, The Growth of Biological Thought (1982) and One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought (1991).
Mayr's accomplishments have earned him numerous honors, including the National Medal of Science (1970), the U.S. government's highest award for scientific research, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Science's Crafoord Prize (1999).
Bibliography
Mayr, Ernst. Evolution and the Diversity of Life: Selected Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1997.
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