3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

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236 5 Biological Species and Speciation—Mayr’s First Synthesis Fig.5.8. Ernst Mayr as cofounder of the Society for the Study of Evolution, 1946 (AMNH Library photographic collection, negative no. 122774) all appeared several years earlier. The geneticists had realized that there was a large field of study in biodiversity and its origin, and the naturalists had realized that the evolutionary ideas of the early Mendelians based on large mutations (saltations) had been most misleading. Therefore, by 1947, there were no more arguments because both sides, the geneticists and the naturalists (systematists), understood that there was no conflict any longer between their thinking. As to Mayr’s personal interactions with other North American “architects” of the evolutionary synthesis, his close relations with Dobzhansky have been detailed above (pp. 133, 185ff.) and his non-interaction with G.G. Simpson in New York during the 1930s–1940s was mentioned on p. 120. During the 1920s Bernhard Rensch had been Mayr’s colleague at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin whose writings influenced Mayr as much as or even more than those of his teacher Erwin Stresemann (pp. 207– 208). As to his personal interactions with Julian Huxley (1887–1975), Sewall Wright (1889–1988), J.B.S. Haldane (1892–1964) and Ronald A. Fisher (1890–1962), Mayr said in an interview (Wilkins 2002):
Community Architect 237 “I knew Julian Huxley for a very long time as an ornithologist and we had met at international congresses and he was an enthusiastic outdoor birdwatcher so we got along just fine. Now Huxley was a really good friend; we visited each other’s houses and our wives were friends. My only criticism of him was that he was so full of ideas and plans that there was very little cohesion between the things that he did. His book, ‘Evolution. The Modern Synthesis’ (1942) was very good in detail but was chaotic in its composition. I now know also why he used to come and visit me in New York. He would sit across the table from me. He would put out a pad and say ‘Now Ernst, what’s the latest in evolutionary biology?’ I would tell him and he would eagerly scribble and then I think he worked it out in a little more detail, fed it to his secretary, she put it together and there was his book! I’m exaggerating but you get the spirit. And so there really was very little in his 1942 book that was his original ideas. And no one ever quotes him as the originator of this or that idea. He is known mostly for coining the term ‘the modern synthesis’ and he had that termbeforetherewasamodernsynthesis.” “The story that I was greatly influenced by Sewall Wright is mostly the concoction of Michael Ruse [e. g. 1999: 118]. Actually I was not influenced very much, if at all, by Sewall Wright. He was a mathematician and looked at everything from that point of view and it just didn’t make sense to me. I used to sit down next to him at Cold Spring Harbor when there were no other dinner companions and I’d try to get a conversation going and I never was successful.” (See also p. 220). Mayr (1959) considered Wright as one of the mathematical geneticists whose theories referred to the same “beanbag genetics” as those of R. A. Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane who calculated independent effects of individual genes without taking into consideration genic interactions and factors other than random drift. Later Mayr admitted that his early views about Sewall Wright’s theoretical contributions were not quite correct (p. 274). “I never knew that J. B. S. Haldane was such a good outdoors man until one day when I visited him in Calcutta he took me to Orissa and we stayed overnight at a government guest house. This was right next to the fields, to a little native village and to really untouched Indian nature. I was an ardent birdwatcher at that time, this was in 1960 when I was about 56 years old. In the morning at about 5 AM I was out there and there were the most marvelous birds, the natives came out of their huts, it was a brilliant morning and I was just absolutely inebriated by this beautiful landscape. I came back to the guesthouse at 7 AM for breakfast and I was still full of enthusiasm and I held forth on how wonderful it was and all that. Suddenly Haldane interrupted me rudely saying ‘Ernst, why didn’t you take me along?’ I said ‘Well, I didn’t know you’d be interested’ and he said ‘Of course.’ So the next morning the arrangement was that he would knock at my door at 5 AM and he surely did and I took him out and we saw all these wonderful things again the next morning and he was just as enthusiastic as I was. We came home and we had had the most wonderful outdoor excursion and ever since that time I realized that in addition to all his mathematics and physiology, how much he was basically afriendofNature.
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Jürgen Haffer Ornithology, Evoluti
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Jürgen Haffer Ornithology, Evoluti
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Preface Ernst Mayr (1904-2005), emi
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Contents Introduction 1 Part I The
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Contents IX 2 Bibliography of Ernst
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2 Introduction and speciation, the
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4 Introduction (1928-1929) to repla
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Ernst Mayr has been an observer all
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The Family 9 court system. He had a
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The Family 11 Fig.1.1. Family genea
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The Family 13 where they learned La
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Birdwatching 15 even finishing befo
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Birdwatching 17 Fig.1.5. ErnstMayr
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Birdwatching 19 Fig.1.6. Ernst Mayr
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Birdwatching 21 he simply smoked ci
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University Student in Greifswald an
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Friendships at School and Universit
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2 The Budding Scientist PhD Thesis
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TheInfluenceofTeachers 37 excellent
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Erwin Stresemann—Teacher and Frie
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Erwin Stresemann—Teacher and Frie
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Assistant Curator at the Museum of
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Expeditions to New Guinea and the S
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Part II Ornithologist and Evolution
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4 Ornithologist and Zoogeographer B
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142 4 Ornithologist and Zoogeograph
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184 5 Biological Species and Specia
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Page 262 and 263: Part III Professor of Zoology at Ha
Page 264 and 265: 256 7 The Harvard Years (1953-2005)
Page 274 and 275: 8 Evolutionary Biology— Mayr’s
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286 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man addresse
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288 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man undertak
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290 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man unaware
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292 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man His hand
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294 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man Prize (1
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296 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man the inte
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298 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man I have s
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300 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man Fig.9.4.
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302 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man not mali
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304 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man papers d
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306 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man 2005. Me
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308 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man Fig.9.5b
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310 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man health i
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312 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man person a
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314 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man with a r
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316 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man conceptu
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318 9 Ernst Mayr—the Man the two
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10 Systematics and Classification T
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322 10 Systematics and Classificati
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11 History and Philosophy of Biolog
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340 11 History and Philosophy of Bi
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376 12 Summary: Appreciation of Ern
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Acknowledgments Iamdeeplygratefulto
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List of Abbreviations AAAS American
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386 References Beehler BM, Pratt TK
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388 References Cracraft J (2002) Go
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390 References Haffer J (1997a) Ess
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392 References Keast JA (1996) Avia
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394 References Olson SL (1975) The
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396 References Smith JJ (1936) Eric
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398 References Wiglesworth LW (1898
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Appendix 1 Curriculum Vitae (includ
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Appendix 1 403 1978 Prêmio Jabuti,
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Appendix 1 405 Society Offices Linn
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Appendix 2 407 1926c Das Freibrüte
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Appendix 2 409 1932 1932a Birds col
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Appendix 2 411 1936g Melidectes bel
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Appendix 2 413 1941e Birds collecte
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Appendix 2 415 1944f Chromosomes an
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Appendix 2 417 1947g On the correct
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Appendix 2 419 1952e Six new subspe
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Appendix 2 421 1954g The tail molt
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Appendix 2 423 1958c Concluding rem
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Appendix 2 425 in E. Mayr, Evolutio
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Appendix 2 427 1964l Introduction [
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Appendix 2 429 1967d Subfamily Pach
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Appendix 2 431 in Acta Soc. Zool. B
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Appendix 2 433 1974b The diversity
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Appendix 2 435 1976m Evolution and
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Appendix 2 437 Mankind 13:430; P.W.
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Appendix 2 439 (1984) in Queen’s
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Appendix 2 441 1984c Evolution and
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Appendix 2 443 1987b The status of
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Appendix 2 445 1990 1990a The Myth
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Appendix 2 447 1992f Haldane’s Ca
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Appendix 2 449 1995g The search for
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Appendix 2 451 1999 1999a Thoughts
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List of Books by Ernst Mayr 453 200
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Coauthorship 455 Coauthorship In th
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Appendix 3 457 (4) Systematics 1942
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Index Achievements 379 Adaptation 2
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Index 461 Faunas 164-165 Family 8-1
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Index 463 Realism and education 372
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