Ernst Mayr dies

[Auburngirl05]

I didn't know exactly where to put this thread but thought Biology may be most appropriate. Here is the is the article I read on it. This is really a sad day for science, I was stunned when I read the news (although he definitely lived a full life)

 

 

Evolutionary Biologist Ernst Mayr Dies

 

http://news.yahoo.com/newstmpl=story&u=/ap/20050204/ap_on_re_us/obit_mayr_1

 

 

 

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Ernst Mayr, one of the world's leading

evolutionary biologists, has died at 100.

 

 

 

The longtime Harvard University faculty member died Thursday at a

retirement community in Bedford.

 

 

His work in the 1930s and '40s, while a curator at the American

Museum of Natural History in New York, established him as a leading

neo-Darwinist, supporting a theory of evolution that is a

combination of Darwin's natural selection theory and modern

genetics.

 

 

In his travels in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, Mayr showed,

unlike Darwin, that species can arise from isolated populations.

 

 

"Professor Mayr's contributions to Harvard University and to the

field of evolutionary biology were extraordinary by any measure,"

Harvard history professor William C. Kirby said, calling Mayr

a "leading mind of the 20th century."

 

 

Mayr "shaped and articulated modern understanding of biodiversity

and related fields," Kirby said.

 

 

Born in Kempten, Germany, Mayr joined the Harvard faculty in 1953 as

a zoology professor and led Harvard's Comparative Zoology museum

from 1961 to 1970. He retired in 1975.

 

 

He is survived by two daughters, five grandchildren and 10 great-

grandchildren.