Ernst Mayr

Overview

Mayr was a German-born ornithologist who collected in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands before spending his career on the theory of species. He argued that a species is not a type defined by a description but a population defined by who breeds with whom, and that new species form when a population is geographically separated long enough to become reproductively incompatible with its parent stock. He was also a persistent critic of the idea that biology reduces to physics and chemistry, holding that explanations in terms of what a trait is for are legitimate in biology and have no counterpart elsewhere. What Evolution Is is written for the general reader and is where to start; The Growth of Biological Thought is the long historical treatment.

Where to start reading

• Systematics and the Origin of Species 1942

  States the biological species concept and the geographic model of speciation that classification has used since.

• The Growth of Biological Thought 1982

  A history of the field organised around its problems, useful for seeing why particular disputes took the shape they did.

• What Evolution Is 2001

  A short account of the evidence and the mechanisms written for readers with no background, and the most accessible thing he wrote.

Part of

• The modern synthesis
• Systematics and taxonomy
• Evolutionary biology

Sources

1. Ernst Mayr Wikipedia
2. Species Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
3. Speciation: The Origin of New Species Nature Education Scitable