Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr was born on July 5, 1904, in Kempten, Germany. He held citizenship in both Germany and the United States over the course of his life, and he used both German and English as working languages. His academic formation took place at the University of Greifswald, where he received his education in the sciences.
Mayr pursued careers as an evolutionary biologist, an ornithologist, and a philosopher. These three vocations shaped the range of his professional activity, placing him at the intersection of empirical natural science and broader conceptual inquiry into the life sciences. Over the decades his contributions attracted recognition from scientific institutions across multiple countries, reflecting the international scope of his work.
That recognition took several concrete forms. Mayr received the Darwin Medal, the Balzan Prize, the Crafoord Prize in Biosciences, and the National Medal of Science. He was also elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, an honor extended to researchers of standing outside the United Kingdom. Together these awards document a career that drew sustained attention from the scientific community over many years.
Ernst Mayr died on February 3, 2005, in Bedford. His life extended from his birth in Kempten in 1904 to his death in Bedford more than a century later, and his receipt of the National Medal of Science remains one of the formal markers of his standing within the fields of evolutionary biology and ornithology.
Quotes by Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr's insights on:
I had found again and again that the most aberrant population of a species – often having reached species rank, and occasionally classified even as a separate genus – occurred at a peripheral location, indeed usually at the most isolated peripheral location.
Our understanding of the world is achieved more effectively by conceptual improvements than by discovery of new facts.
The most consequential change in man’s view of the world, of living nature and of himself came with the introduction, over a period of some 100 years beginning only in the 18th century, of the idea of change itself, of change over periods of time: in a word, of evolution.
I have the honesty to say I’m an Atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God.
Every politician, clergyman, educator, or physician, in short, anyone dealing with human individuals, is bound to make grave mistakes if he ignores these two great truths of population zoology: (1) no two individuals are alike, and (2) both environment and genetic endowment make a contribution to nearly every trait.
I have the honesty to say I'm an Atheist. There is nothing that supports the idea of a personal God.
The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts for a new theory but simply failed to ask the right questions.
On the other hand, famous evolutionists such as Dobzhansky were firm believers in a personal God. He would work as a scientist all week and then on Sunday get down on his knees and pray to God. Frankly I've never been able to understand it because you would need two totally different compartments in your brain, one that deals with religion and the other with everything else.
most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic.