From Acclaimed Evolutionary Biologist Ernst Mayr Dies:
Ernst Mayr, a Harvard University evolutionary biologist called ‘the Darwin of the 20th century,’ has died, the school said Friday. He was 100.A member of the Harvard faculty for more than half a century, Mayr was considered the world’s most eminent evolutionary biologist. He almost single-handedly made the origin of species diversity the central question of evolutionary biology that it is today, Harvard said.
In an interview with The Boston Globe before his 100th birthday last year, Mayr said he always had ‘tremendous curiosity’ and balked at suggestions he stop working.
‘People say to me, Why don’t you retire?’ I say, ‘My God, why should I retire? I enjoy what I’m doing,” he told the Globe.
Through his travels in New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, Mayr showed what Darwin had never quite established: that new species arise from isolated populations.
Particularly apropos for an evolutionary biologist:
He is survived by two daughters, five grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.