Ernst Mayr Centenary
 May 10, 2004
 Geology Lecture Hall, University Museum
24 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA

The Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University invites you to attend a one-day symposium and following reception in honor of Professor Ernst Mayr's 100th birthday and his many outstanding contributions to evolutionary biology.

Speakers include Walter Bock, Douglas Futuyma, Andrew Knoll, Lynn Margulis, Axel Meyer, Ira Rubinoff, Kerry Shaw, Frank Sulloway, and Mary Jane West-Eberhard.


Jared Diamond on Ernst Mayr

When the first bird survey of the Cyclops Mountains was carried out. I found it hard to imagine how anyone could have survived the difficulties of that first survey of 1928, considering the already-severe difficulties of my second survey in 1990.

That 1928 survey was carried out by the then-23-year-old Ernst Mayr [pictured on the right], who had just pulled off the remarkable achievement of completing his Ph.D. thesis in zoology while simultaneously completing his pre-clinical studies at medical school. Like Darwin, Ernst had been passionately devoted to outdoor natural history as a boy, and he had thereby come to the attention of Erwin Stresemann, a famous ornithologist at Berlin's Zoological Museum. In 1928 Stresemann, together with ornithologists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and at Lord Rothschild's Museum near London, came up with a bold scheme to "clean up" the outstanding remaining ornithological mysteries of New Guinea, by tracking down all of the perplexing birds of paradise known only from specimens collected by natives and not yet traced to their home grounds by European collectors. Ernst, who had never been outside Europe, was the person selected for this daunting research program.

Ernst's "clean-up" consisted of thorough bird surveys of New Guinea's five most important north coastal mountains, a task whose difficulties are impossible to conceive today in these days when bird explorers and their field assistants are at least not at acute risk of being ambushed by the natives. Ernst managed to befriend the local tribes, was officially but incorrectly reported to have been killed by them, survived severe attacks of malaria and dengue and dysentery and other tropical diseases plus a forced descent down a waterfall and a near-drowning in an overturned canoe, succeeded in reaching the summits of all five mountains, and amassed large collections of birds with many new species and subspecies. Despite the thoroughness of his collections, they proved to contain not a single one of the mysterious "missing" birds of paradise. That astonishing negative discovery provided Stresemann with the decisive clue to the mystery's solution: all of those missing birds were hybrids between known species of birds of paradise, hence their rarity.

From New Guinea, Ernst went on to the Solomon Islands in the Southwest Pacific, where as a member of the Whitney South Sea Expedition he participated in bird surveys of several islands, including the notorious Malaita (even more dangerous in those days than was New Guinea). A telegram then invited him to come in 1930 to the American Museum of Natural History in New York to identify the tens of thousands of bird specimens collected by the Whitney Expedition on dozens of Pacific Islands. Just as Darwin's "explorations," sitting at home, of collections of barnacles were as important to Darwin in forming his insights as was his visit to the Galapagos Islands, so too Ernst Mayr's "explorations" of bird specimens in museums were as important as his fieldwork in New Guinea and the Solomons in forming his own insights into geographic variation and evolution. In 1953 Ernst moved from New York to Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology, where even today he continues to work at the age of 97, still writing a new book every year or two. For scholars studying evolution and the history and philosophy of biology, Ernst's hundreds of technical articles and dozens of technical books have been for a long time the standard reference works.

But in addition to gaining insights from his own fieldwork in the Pacific and from his own studies of museum bird specimens, Ernst has collaborated with many other scientists to extract insights from other species, ranging from flies and flowering plants to snails and people. One of those collaborations transformed my own life, just as the meeting with Erwin Stresemann transformed Ernst's life. While I was a teenaged schoolboy, my father, a physician studying human blood groups, collaborated with Ernst in the first study proving that human blood groups evolve subject to natural selection. I thereby met Ernst at dinner at my parents' house, was later instructed by him in the identification of Pacific island birds, began in 1964 the first of 19 ornithological expeditions of my own to New Guinea and the Solomons, and in 1971 began to collaborate with Ernst on a massive book about Solomon and Bismarck birds that we completed only this year, after 30 years of work. My career, like that of so many other scientists today, thus exemplifies how Ernst Mayr has shaped the lives of 20th-century scientists: through his ideas, his writings, his collaborations, his example, his lifelong warm friendships, and his encouragement.

— Jared Diamond

Excerpted from Jared Diamond's Introduction to What Evolution Is by Ernst Mayr — ScienceMasters Series/Basic Books; October 2001

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Speciation in Herbivorous Insects:
Time for a New Paradigm?

Douglas Futuyma
University of Wisconsin, Madison/
State University of New York, Stony Brook

Summary: The question of sympatric speciation remains one of the great controversies of evolutionary biology. Futuyma "out-Mayr's" Mayr in his doubts that sympatric speciation is a viable process. Host-specific herbivorous insects have often been used as an exemplar of species which are prone to sympatric speciation, but Futuyma finds little evidence that such processes are common. Contrary to a great deal of current literature that would suggest that allopatric and sympatric speciations are equally likely, Futuyma suggests that we should not jump to that conclusion. Rather we must require robust theory and robust evidence before we blithely accept an hypothesis.

Run Time: 30:14   Bit Rate: 44 kbps


A Planetary Perspective on Evolution

Andrew Knoll, Harvard University

Summary: What does paleontology have to contribute to evolutionary biology? One answer is of course that paleontology contributes a direct historical record of evolution, one that includes organisms such as trilobites and dinosaurs, organisms whose existence would not easily be inferred on the basis of phylogeny alone. But it does more than that. What paleontology really does is to inform us about the nature of evolution on an active planetary surface. Beginning in the 1970's, a number of paleontologists began to challenge the notion that populational processes are sufficient for a complete understanding of the evolution of life on earth, an idea most clearly spelled out by Stanley's dictum, "Macroevolution is decoupled from microevolution." Knoll, along with his colleagues Bambach and Sepkoski, expands this hypothesis, presenting work that demonstrates significant pattern shifts during the Phanerozoic which are intimately associated with global catastrophic events.

Run Time: 34:39   Bit Rate: 35 kbps


Speciation and Diversification
of the Adaptive Radiations of Cichlid Fishes:
Evolutionary Enigma or Evolutionary Model

Axel Meyer, University of Konstanz

Summary: Twenty years ago Mayr succinctly reviewed the work on fish species flocks in a commentary to a compendium of largely empirical studies and raised two important questions about the formation of the species flocks of cichlids: (i) Is the presence of hundreds of closely related species within a single lake inconsistent with the hypotheses of traditional allopatric speciation modes? (ii) Do the species flocks refute the principle of competitive exclusion? Meyer examines in detail the phylogeography of the species flocks of the lakes of the Rift Valley, emphasizing especially the rise and fall of water levels connecting the lakes, reinforcing Mayr's 1942 comment, "There is little doubt, that the species flocks... have developed by the normal process of geographic isolation... Ecological specialization helps now to preserve the discontinuities between the species, but it is not responsible for their creation." However the open question that remains is the role of behavioral assortive mating, particularly so with regards to sexual selection, in the creation of species within the lakes.

Run Time: 45:47   Bit Rate: 40 kbps


Ernst's Comments on the Occasion of his 100th Birthday

Ernst Mayr, Harvard University

"I am overwhelmed... with a feeling of enormous gratitude to so many people that made my life productive and enjoyable... Beginning with my parents who gave me a wonderful education, my various professors and role models, all sorts of people along my career helped me, gave me ideas, supported my work, in all sorts of ways... I've had a wonderful life."

Run Time: 5:28   Bit Rate: 30 kbps

"It is no exaggeration to claim that most of the greatest advances in biology were made possible by asking 'Why?' questions."

— E. Mayr, Evolution and the diversity of life, Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1976, p. 399.

Curriculum Vitae
ERNST MAYR
July 5, 1904-February 3, 2005

Title:

  • Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.

Special fields:

  • Ornithology, systematics, zoogeography, evolution, history and philosophy of biology

Born:

  • Kempten, Germany: 5 July 1904 Naturalized U.S. citizen

Married:

  • Margarete Simon, born 1912 (deceased Aug. 23, 1990)

Children:

  • Christa Elisabeth
  • Susanne
  • 5 grandchildren
  • 10 great grandchildren

Education:

  • 1925 Cand. med., University of Greifswald
  • 1926 Ph.D., University of Berlin (Zoology) (24 June)

Expeditions:

  • 1928 Rothschild Expedition to Dutch New Guinea
  • 1928-29 Expedition to Mandated Territory of New Guinea (University of Berlin)
  • 1929-30 Whitney Expedition to Solomon Islands (American Museum of Natural History)

Positions:

  • 1926-32 Assistant Curator, Zoological Museum, University of Berlin
  • 1932-44 Associate Curator, Whitney-Rothschild Collection, American Museum of Natural History, New York
  • 1944-53 Curator, Whitney-Rothschild Collection, AMNH, New York (to 30 June 1953)
  • 1953-75 Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Harvard University
  • 1961-70 Director, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University
  • 1975-2005 Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Emeritus, Harvard University

Honorary Degrees:

  • 1957 Ph.D., Uppsala University (Sweden)
  • 1959 D.Sc., Yale University
  • 1959 D.Sc., University of Melbourne (Australia)
  • 1966 D.Sc., Oxford University (England)
  • 1968 D.Phil., University of Munich (Germany)
  • 1974 D.Phil., University of Paris VI (Sorbonne)
  • 1979 D.Sc., Harvard University
  • 1982 D.Sc., Cambridge University
  • 1982 D.Sc., Guelph University (Canada)
  • 1984 D.Sc., University of Vermont
  • 1993 Ph.D, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • 1994 D.Sc., University of Vienna
  • 1994 D.Phil., University of Konstanz
  • 1995 D. Sc., University of Bologna
  • 1996 D. Sc., Rollins College
  • 1997 Honoris Causa Degree, Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris
  • 2000 D. Phil., University of Berlin

Lectureships and Visiting Professorships:

  • 1941 Jesup Lecturer, Columbia University
  • 1947 Lecturer, Philadelphia Academy of Sciences
  • 1949; 1974 Visiting Professor, University of Minnesota
  • 1950-53 Lecturer, Columbia University
  • 1951 Visiting Professor, University of Pavia, Italy
  • 1952 Visiting Professor, University of Washington
  • 1967 Life Sciences Lecturer, University of California, Davis
  • 1971 Maytag Visiting Professor, Arizona State University
  • 1972 Visiting Professor, University of California, Riverside
  • 1977 Alexander v. Humboldt Awardee, Würzburg Universität
  • 1978 Visiting Professor, University of California, San Diego
  • 1978 Visiting Professor, College de France, Paris
  • 1985 Messenger Lectures, Cornell University
  • 1987 Hitchcock Professorship, University of California

Special Awards:

  • 1946 Leidy Medal, Academy of Nat. Sc., Philadelphia
  • 1958 Wallace Darwin Medal, Linnean Society of London
  • 1965 Brewster Medal, American Ornithologists' Union
  • 1966 Verrill Medal, Peabody Museum, Yale University
  • 1967 Daniel Giraud Eliot Medal, National Acad. of Sci.
  • 1969 Centennial Medal, American Museum of Natural History
  • 1969 National Medal of Science
  • 1971 Walker Prize, Museum of Science, Boston, MA
  • 1972 Molina Prize, Accademia delle Scienze, Bologna, Italy
  • 1977 Linnean Medal (Zoology), Linnean Society, London
  • 1977 Coues Prize, American Ornithologists' Union
  • 1978 Premio Jabuti, Brazil, CBL
  • 1978 Medal, College de France
  • 1980 Mendel Medal, Leopoldina Academy (Halle)
  • 1983 E. Eisenmann Medal, Linn. Soc. of New York
  • 1983 Balzan Prize
  • 1984 Darwin Medal, Royal Society
  • 1986 Award for Service to the Systematics Community by the Association of Systematics Collection
  • 1986 Sarton Medal (History of Science)
  • 1989 Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Medal
  • 1991 Phi Beta Kappa Book Prize
  • 1994 Salvin Godman medal, British Ornithologists' Union
  • 1994 International Prize for Biology, Japan Prize
  • 1994 Dedication of the Ernst Mayr Library at the Museum of Comparative Zoology
  • 1995 Walk of Fame, Rollins College
  • 1995 Benjamin Franklin Medal (American Philosophical Society)
  • 1996 George Gaylord Simpson Award (Society for the Study of Evolution)
  • 1997 Establishment of the Ernst Mayr Lectureship at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie
  • 1998 Lewis Thomas Prize
  • 1999 Crafoord Prize
  • 2000 Golden Plate Award (American Academy of Achievement)

Honorary Society Memberships (50):

  • 1939 Royal Australian Ornithological Union, Corresponding Member
  • 1941 Deutsche Ornithologen Gesellschaft, Honorary Member
  • 1943 American Society of Naturalists, Honorary Member
  • 1945 Netherlands Ornithological Society, Corresponding Member; 1953, Honorary Member
  • 1948 Societe Ornithologique de France, Honorary Foreign Member
  • 1948 Zoological Society of London, Corresponding Member
  • 1949 Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, Correspondent
  • 1951 Botanical Gardens of Indonesia, Honorary Member
  • 1951 Ornithologische Gesellschaft in Bayern, Corresponding Member; 1976, Honorary Member
  • 1952 Linaean Society of London, Foreign Member
  • 1952 South African Ornithological Society, Corresponding Member
  • 1950 Royal Society of New Zealand
  • 1954 American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Fellow
  • 1954 National Academy of Sciences, Member
  • 1955 K. Vetenskaps Societeten, Uppsala, Honorary Member
  • 1955 Zoological Society of India, Corresponding Fellow; 1961, Honorary Member
  • 1956 British Ornithological Union, Honorary Member
  • 1956 Dansk Ornithologisk Forening, Honorary Member
  • 1958 American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow
  • 1962 La Sociedad Venezolana de Ciencias Naturales, Corresponding Member
  • 1963 Asociacion Ornithologica Del Plata (Buenos Aires), Honorary Member
  • 1963 Societas Scientiarum Fennica (Helsingfors), Honorary Member
  • 1965 American Philosophical Society, Member
  • 1968 Sociedad Colombiana de Naturalistas, Honorary Member
  • 1970 Zoologische Gesellschaft, Germany, Honorary Member
  • 1971 Academia de Ciencias Fisicas, Matematicas y Naturales (Caracas, Venezuela), Foreign Corresponding Member
  • 1972 Department of Ornithology, AMNH, Curator Emeritus
  • 1972 Deut. Akad. Naturforscher (Leopoldina)
  • 1972 Societe Zoologique de France, Member d'honneur
  • 1975 Sociedad Espanola de Ornitologia (Madrid), Honorary Member
  • 1975 Nuttall Ornithological Club, Honorary Member
  • 1976 Society of Systematic Zoology, Honorary Member
  • 1976 Linnean Society of New York, Honorary Member
  • 1977 Senckenbergische Gesellschaft, Frankfurt, Korrespond. Mitglied
  • 1977 Bayerische Adademie, Mu"nchen, Korrespond. Mitglied
  • 1978 Academie des Sciences, etc., Toulouse, Corresponding Member
  • 1980 Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Foreign Member
  • 1981 Italian Zoological Society, Foreign Member
  • 1984 Zool. Soc. of London, Honorary Member
  • 1986 American Society of Zoologists, Honorary Member
  • 1988 Royal Society, Foreign Member
  • 1989 Academie des Sciences, Paris, Associate
  • 1993 Center for the Philosophy of Science, Pittsburgh (Honorary Fellow)
  • 1994 Russian Academy of Science, Moscow
  • 1994 Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie
  • 1998 Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin, Korrespond. Mitglied.
  • 2002 New York Academy of Sciences, Honorary Life Member 2002 Verband Deutscher Biologen, Honorary Membership
  • 2003 German Darwin Society, Berlin, Honorary Fellow
  • 2004 Mülleriana, The Fritz Müller Society of Natural History

Society Memberships and Offices:

  • American Ornithologists' Union
    Vice President, 1953-56; President, 1956-59
  • American Society of Naturalists
    President, 1962-63
  • Linnaean Society of New York
    Secretary-editor, 1934-41; Fellow, 1944
  • New York Zoological Society
    Fellow, 1944; Scientific Fellow, 1987
  • Society for the Study of Evolution
    Secretary, 1946; Editor, 1947-49; President, 1950
  • Society of Systematic Zoology
    President, 1966
  • 11th International Zoological Congress
    Vice President, 1958
  • 13th International Ornithological Congress
    President, 1962

List of Books:

I. Sole Authorship
  • 1941 List of New Guinea birds. A systematic and faunal list of the birds of New Guinea and adjacent islands. The American Museum Natural History, 1-260.
  • 1942 Systematics and the Origin of Species. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • 1945 Birds of the Southwest Pacific. New York: The Macmillan Co.
  • 1963 Animal Species and Evolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  • 1969 Principles of Systematic Zoology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • 1970 Populations, Species, and Evolution. An abridgement of Animal Species and Evolution. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  • 1976 Evolution and the Diversity of Life. Selected Essays. Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  • 1981 La biologie d'evolution. Paris: Hermann.
  • 1982 The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  • 1988 Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  • 1991 One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  • 1997 This is Biology: The Science of the Living World. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  • 2001 What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books.
  • 2004 What Makes Biology Unique. Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline. New York: Cambridge University Press.
II. Co-author
  • 1929 Zeitschriftenverzeichnis des Museums für Naturkunde. Mitteilungen aus dem Zoologischen Museum in Berlin 14: 1-187 (with Wilhelm Meise).
  • 1946 Birds of the Philippines. New York: The Macmillan Co. (with Jean Delacour).
  • 1953 Methods and Principles of Systematic Zoology. New York: McGraw-Hill (with E. G. Linsley and R. L. Usinger). 1991 Principles of Systematic Zoology. Revised ed. New York: McGraw-Hill (with Peter Ashlock).
  • 2001 The birds of northern Melanesia. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press (with Jared Diamond).
III. Editor
  • 1949 Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution. Edited by Glenn L. Jepsen, George Gaylord Simpson, and Ernst Mayr. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • 1949 Ornithologie als biologische Wissenschaft. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Erwin Stresemann. Edited by Ernst Mayr and E. Schüz. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
  • 1957 The Species Problem. Edited by Ernst Mayr. Publication No. 50 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Washington, D. C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science.
  • 1960, 1962, 1964, 1986. Check-list of birds of the world, vol. 9, 10, 11, 15. Edited by Ernst Mayr and Co-Editors. Cambridge, Mass.: Museum of Comparative Zoology.
  • 1980 The Evolutionary Synthesis. Edited by Ernst Mayr and William Provine. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

731 Journal Articles

These lectures were recorded with financial assistance
from the US National Science Foundation.


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