Ernst Mayr (redirected from Ernst Walter Mayr)

Mayr, Ernst 

Born July 5, 1904, in Kempten, Germany. American zoologist-taxonomist and evolutionist; member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (1954).

In 1926, upon graduation from Greifswald University, Mayr became an assistant at the zoological museum of Berlin University (now Humboldt University). In 1928-29 he conducted ornithological research in New Guinea. He came to the USA in 1931. He was a staff member of the Museum of Natural History in New York from 1931 to 1953; he has been a professor at Harvard University since 1953; he was director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard from 1961 to 1970.

Mayr’s principal works are on ornithology, zoogeography, the theory of taxonomy, and methods of taxonomic research. His chief works deal with species structure, species formation, and other problems of evolution. He is an advocate of the principle of allopatric species formation. He synthesized present-day progressive (including genetic) notions of evolution, mainly at the species level, in a number of works that have played an important role in the development and dissemination of the latest evolutionary views. He has written considerably on the history and philosophy of biology. He is a member of a number of foreign academies of science and has received honorary doctorates from many universities.

WORKS

“Change of Genetic Environment and Evolution.” In Evolution as a Process, 2nd ed. London, 1958.
“Cause and Effect in Biology.” Science, 1961, vol. 134, no. 3489.
In Russian translation:
Sistematika i proiskhozhdenie vidov s tochki zreniia zoologa. Moscow, 1947.
Metody i printsipy zoologicheskoi sistematiki. Moscow, 1956. (With E. Linsley and R. Usinger.)
Zoologicheskii vid i evoliutsiia. Moscow, 1968.
Printsipy zoologicheskoi sistematiki. Moscow, 1971.
Populiatsii, vidy i evoliutsiia. Moscow, 1974.

V. G. GEPTNER