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Society of New York (see p. 110). His proposals for the title of the journal and for
the editorial policy were approved without objection. In late 1946 the funding of
the journal Evolution had been secured and the first manuscripts were in hand.
Mayr fully realized the opportunities for reform and recommended that all papers
should deal with evolutionary factors and forces, i.e., with the process of evolution.
A logistic problem ensued, when many printers had no spare capacities, as
they worked through large wartime backlogs. Eventually Lancaster Press (in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania) was able to accommodate Mayr’s schedule. The first double
issue of Evolution (vol. 1, numbers 1–2) was distributed to 746 subscribers in July
1947.
The new Evolution Society, Mayr wrote to Stresemann, “is a joint affair of
geneticists, taxonomists, and paleontologists, somewhat equivalent to the circle
that Timoféeff-Ressovsky had gathered [in Germany during the 1930s and early
1940s]. Huxley, Dobzhansky, and myself are the prime movers of this new venture.
The taxonomists and naturalists of this country, as well as of England, are beginning
to realize that they can contribute a great deal to the study of evolution, and we
are trying to focus these efforts and break down the borderlines between these
fields” (24 January 1946) and “It is important to emphasize the evolutionary angle
as a counterbalance against the assertions of the physicists and chemists who see
nothing in this particular branch of research. Science in this country is literally
swimming in money but it has to be atomic science or medical research, otherwise
no money at all is available. People like Dobzhansky, Simpson, and myself try to
counteract this trend but it is very difficult” (25 January 1949).
For his 3-year term Mayr solicited manuscripts on specific topics to balance
the coverage of various fields and corresponded with the authors. He took his job
very seriously making numerous suggestions on the contents and presentation of
nearly every manuscript, and provided additional references to the literature. As
a systematist, he also envisioned the journal as an outlet for publications on the
evolutionary byproducts of “museum men,” i.e., morphologists, biogeographers
and ecologists, whether neontologists or paleontologists, zoologists or botanists.
He continuously attempted to balance such topics against the prevalence of genetical
articles on Drosophila, with partial success only because not all promised
contributions from the fields of anthropology, paleontology, botany, and taxonomy
were submitted despite Mayr’s active solicitations.
“I find it difficult to get a stock of good manuscript every three months. The
forthcoming issue has two or three rather weak contributions in it, but the June
issue again will have some excellent papers. However, like every good editor, I must
do an almost incredible amount of letter writing to get contributions from the right
kind of people. The promises I now have are sufficient to fill two full volumes, but
unfortunately one can’t print a journal with promises. My manuscript drawer is
empty each time an issue goes to press. This means that I have to do some rather
hectic editing of the last-minute manuscripts before they go to the printer” (to
Stresemann on March 9, 1948).
As mentioned above, Mayr also intended to bring the systematists into the community
of evolution workers. Discussions of evolutionary topics by systematists,