Outside the Beltway

Ernst Mayr Dies

· Saturday, February 5, 2005 · 1 comment

Ernst Mayr, a biologist who was at the forefront of establishing links between Darwin’s theories of natural selection and genetics has died of liver cancer. Mayr’s work established the beginings of evolutionary biology and first suggested that Darwin’s theory of natural selection could explain all of evolution. He started his work with birds in New Guinea and ended up winning several awards including three prestigous awards in biology,

Dr. Mayr was the first scientist to win biology’s “triple crown,” capturing the International Balzan Foundation prize in 1983, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Crafoord Prize in 1999 and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science’s International Prize for Biology in 1994. He also won the U.S. National Medal of Science in 1970. He was named one of the 100 most influential scientists of all time in a 1996 book.

This is indeed a great loss.

FILED UNDER: Science & Technology, ,
Steve Verdon
About Steve Verdon
Steve has a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and attended graduate school at The George Washington University, leaving school shortly before staring work on his dissertation when his first child was born. He works in the energy industry and prior to that worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Division of Price Index and Number Research. He joined the staff at OTB in November 2004.

Comments

  1. Anderson says:
    Sunday, 6 February 2005 at 16:50

    What will Thunderbird’s NYT obituary look like, I wonder? Not that I hope to be reading it anytime soon.

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