Ernst Mayr, the Harvard University evolutionary biologist who has been called “the Darwin of the 20th century,” died last month (Feb. 3) at a retirement community in Bedford, Mass. A member of the Harvard faculty for more than half a century, he was 100.
Widely considered the world’s most eminent evolutionary biologist and even one of the 100 greatest scientists of all time, Mayr joined Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1953 as Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and led Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology from 1961 to 1970. He retired in 1975, assuming the title Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology Emeritus.
Throughout his nearly 80-year career, as his research ranged throughout ornithology, taxonomy, zoogeography, evolution, systematics, and the history and philosophy of biology, Mayr maintained an unshakable faith in Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“I’m an old-time fighter for Darwinism,” he told the Harvard Gazette in a 1991 interview. “I say, ‘Please tell me what is wrong with Darwinism. I can’t see anything wrong with Darwinism.’” (from an article by Steve Bradt in the Harvard Gazette: Ernst Mayr, giant among evolutionary biologists, dies at 100)
Read more at The N.Y. Times: Ernst Mayr, 100, Premier Evolutionary Biologist