Ernst W. Mayr
| Ernst Mayr | |
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Mayr in 1994
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| Born | Ernst Walter Mayr July 5, 1904 Kempten, Bavaria, Germany |
| Died | February 3, 2005 (aged 100) Bedford, Massachusetts, United States |
| Residence | United States |
| Nationality | German/American |
| Fields | Systematics, evolutionary biology, ornithology, philosophy of biology |
| Doctoral students | Robert Trivers |
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Ernst Walter Mayr (/ˈmaɪər/; 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005) was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, philosopher of biology, and historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept.
Although Charles Darwin and others posited that multiple species could evolve from a single common ancestor, the mechanism by which this occurred was not understood, creating the species problem. Ernst Mayr approached the problem with a new definition for species. In his book Systematics and the Origin of Species (1942) he wrote that a species is not just a group of morphologically similar individuals, but a group that can breed only among themselves, excluding all others. When populations within a species become isolated by geography, feeding strategy, mate choice, or other means, they may start to differ from other populations through genetic drift and natural selection, and over time may evolve into new species. The most significant and rapid genetic reorganization occurs in extremely small populations that have been isolated (as on islands).
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