Stephen Jay Gould, the brilliant and controversial evolutionary biologist has died of cancer aged 60. He was first diagnosed with the disease in 1982.
Gould will be remembered as one of the most influential evolutionary thinkers of the last century and his ideas attracted adulation and criticism in equal measure.
In 1972, with fellow graduate student Niles Eldredge, he developed the idea that evolution occurs not gradually, but as a series of jumps. The argument over the theory of 鈥減unctuated equilibrium鈥� still rumbles on today.
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Gould and Eldredge pointed out that while traditional Darwinian evolution describes a gradual process, the fossil record is made up mainly of long static periods punctuated by rapid spurts of change.
鈥淗e gave a salutary kick to the slumbering giant of evolution,鈥� says evolutionary biologist Steve Jones, of University College London. 鈥淗e turned out to be wrong, but he was magnificently wrong.鈥�
Jones compares him to the explorer Christopher Columbus: 鈥淐olumbus set out to find India, but found the New World. If that is failure then give me failure any day.鈥�
Richard Dawkins at Oxford University was on the opposite side in the debate over punctuated equilibrium. 鈥淎lthough we disagreed about much, we shared much too,鈥� Dawkins told 快猫短视频, 鈥渋ncluding a spellbound delight in the wonders of the natural world, and a shared conviction that such wonders deserve nothing less than a purely natural explanation.鈥�
Magnum opus
Ironically, the debate between the punctuationists and the gradualists was seized on by the religious right in the US in an attempt to discredit Darwinism. But Gould was a tireless campaigner to prevent creationists from removing evolution from the school curriculum.
Despite his illness, Gould published his magnum opus 鈥� 鈥淭he Structure of Evolutionary Theory鈥� 鈥� this year. David Wake of the University of California, Berkeley reviewing the book in Nature described it as, 鈥渁 manifesto for a new kind of evolutionary biology, one that makes full use of many kinds of knowledge, as well as diverse ways of seeing.鈥� However, others note that as his success grew, his uncompromising attitude to being edited also grew.
Gould was an active Harvard academic for 35 years, but perhaps his most lasting contribution will be the best-selling popular science books he wrote, including Ever Since Darwin and The Panda鈥檚 Thumb.
His monthly essays for Natural History magazine were also legendary. Between 1974 and 2001 he made 300 contributions, 鈥渦ninterrupted by illness, hell, highwater or the World Series.鈥�
Jones told 快猫短视频 that Gould鈥檚 contribution was as an agitator: 鈥淗e will be remembered as a mosquito on the backside of biology and a master of popularisation.鈥� Dawkins adds, 鈥淗is powerful voice will echo on for a long time.鈥�
Gould is survived by his second wife Rhonda Roland Shearer and two sons from his previous marriage.