Web Extra Wednesday, May 22 In Memoriam: Stephen Jay Gould
Gould dies at age 60
Remembering Stephen Jay Gould
On Monday, paleontologist and popular author Stephen Jay Gould died at the age of 60 at his home in New York. Gould died of metastasized lung cancer, according to a Harvard University statement. When he was 42, he had faced a different cancer, abdominal mesothelioma, which he fought off with experimental treatments. The Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard, Gould also taught geology and the history of science. He was a prolific writer and producer of scientific ideas, many that challenged theories about the mechanisms by which life has evolved and continues to evolve. "When the history of our discipline is written, he will be seen as a major juncture point. That's true whether you agree or disagree with him," says Warren Allmon, a paleontologist at Cornell University, director of the Paleontological Research Institution, and one of Gould's graduate students during the 1980s. Thirty years ago, Gould and colleague Niles Eldredge, now a curator in the Division of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, publicized the theory of punctuated equilibrium: that evolutionary changes happen in dramatic spurts separated by long periods of stasis. "Thirty years ago, we didn't believe in catastrophes, we didn't believe in sudden evolutionary change. We thought everything was slow and gradual. We don't think that way anymore," Allmon says. "What we teach students now we never would have taught them 30 years ago. Â
He was part of the nexus of all that." | |
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