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to all the members as a “Bulletin.” The first number was distributed in May 1944.
This led to further discussion among other members or with the original correspondents
and Mayr edited three additional “Bulletins.” Gretel Mayr contributed
also to this effort by typing mimeographed stencils. Otherwise there was, during
World War II, virtually no interaction between the Eastern and Western Groups.
According to Cain (2002b: 302), Ernst Mayr was an aggressive editor, prompting
queries, recruiting additional materials, instigating interaction. Under wartime
conditions he was leading a highly successful “synthetic” and integrative program.
Arguing that systematics was “the vital link” between paleontology and genetics,
Mayr proposed and was granted a change in the name of the CCP in April 1944,
adding systematics: Committee on Common Problems of Genetics, Paleontology,
and Systematics. At the same time he began thinking and talking to colleagues,
in particular Dobzhansky (back from Brazil in spring 1944), about a Society for
the Study of Evolution with its own journal, i.e., projects along the lines that he as
a member of the defunct Society for the Study of Speciation had envisioned earlier.
Because, by rule, Committees under the auspices of the National Research Council
had to be temporary, Mayr was planning for the future of the CCP after the war
had ended.
When G. G. Simpson returned to New York in the autumn of 1944, he added,
as chairman of the Committee, a preface to Mayr’s fourth Bulletin praising the
progress made and stating: “From the whole series of letters in the Bulletin there
has emerged concrete evidence that a field common to the disciplines of genetics,
paleontology, and systematics does really exist and this field is beginning to be
clearly defined.” He also agreed with Mayr’s and Dobzhansky’s ideas about founding
a Society for the Study of Evolution and its journal. Specific planning was
somewhat delayed until December 1945 and led to the formal launching of both
the Society and the journal Evolution in June 1946 (Fig. 5.8).The next meeting took
place during the December 1946 AAAS meetings in Boston. It was voted that the
purpose of the society would be “the promotion of the study of organic evolution
and the integration of the various fields of biology.”
The main sporadic activity of the CCP under Simpson and Dobzhansky during
1945 and 1946 was the planning and organizing of the postponed major symposium
in Princeton. Mayr was a member of the steering committee and G. Jepsen
headed the local organization. The conference on “Genetics, Paleontology and Evolution”
in January 1947 was culmination of work of the CCP and at the same time
signaled the beginning of the new evolution society (Jepsen 1949). Due to Mayr’s
insistence David Lack from Britain was invited to bring ecology into the synthesis.
But, as Mayr revealed in his autobiographical notes, Dobzhansky’s coworker on
Drosophila, J. T. Patterson of Texas, had not been invited (due to a confusion with
Bryan Patterson of Chicago). Dobzhansky, enraged, was about to leave Princeton.
Several of his friends managed to persuade him to stay, but he refused to contribute
to the conference volume (1949) and to be listed as one of its editors.
The conference in 1947 was a confirmation of the evolutionary synthesis (or
rather a synthesis because, by modern standards, it was far from complete). The
books by Dobzhansky (1937), Mayr (1942), Huxley (1942), and Simpson (1944) had