3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

Cold Spring Harbor (1943–1952) 249
was more like Sewall Wright, who was equally only mildly holistic. The manuscript
of my 1954 paper was read and criticized by Wallace, and in fact one of the figures
in that paper was inspired by Wallace’s suggestion.
Wallace was a superb experimenter. He knew how to set up the crucial experiments,
and didn’t mind the immense amount of work some of them involved.
What is unfortunate is that he was very poor in expressing himself in lectures
and equally poor at presenting his ideas in print. After one of his lectures you
were always wondering what he had really proved. One of the consequences of the
opaqueness of his writing is that his work did not have nearly as much impact as
I think it should have had.”
(5) Curt Stern (1902–1981): Mayr knew the geneticist Curt Stern from the latter’s
lectures at Columbia University and then they met at Cold Spring Harbor: “Another
German refugee who was a good friend of Gretel’s and mine was Curt Stern.
He, together with Tracy Sonneborn, was the clearest lecturer I ever encountered.
He was able to make the most difficult genetic interactions perfectly simple. His
special field, morphogenetics, is very difficult, and he was perhaps the only specialist
in his time. Earlier he had made some decisive discoveries which facilitated
his finding a position after he had to flee from Germany. He was always grateful
that he had managed to bring his parents to America, something neither Ernst nor
Hansi Caspari had been able to do.
Stern had a tremendous sense of justice. He had what in German is called ‘Zivilcourage.’
During the war when Germans were viciously attacked in the American
newspapers and even in Science, Stern pointed out that such accusations were not
true for all Germans but that the majority of the Germans, he was quite sure, did
not share the Nazi ideas. To publish something like that in the middle of the war
required great courage and indeed, Stern encountered a good deal of hostility.
I first encountered his name when I got my PhD in Berlin at age 21 with the
predicate summa cum laude. At that time, I was told that the only person in recent
years who had achieved the same distinction was a person with the name of Curt
Stern. I did not actually encounter him until many years later in the United States
when he was lecturing at Columbia University. I believe Stern originally was a student
of Max Hartmann, but later felt much closer in his interests to Goldschmidt.
Stern always stood up for the right things, but did it in such a pleasant and modest
way that we all admired him. Having been trained in the Dahlem embryologicalcytological
school, he had only an incomplete understanding of evolution. I once
attended a lecture of his, the ultimate aim of which was to demonstrate the possibility
of sympatric speciation. He did so because owing to his Dahlem upbringing
he felt that most new species originated by saltation. The memoir about Goldschmidt
which he prepared for the National Academy [Biographical Memoirs,vol.
39 (1967): 141–192] is quite admirable in bringing out both the great achievements
of Goldschmidt without minimizing his faults. I always regretted that he was so far
away, first in Rochester, then in Berkeley, so that I had only few chances of direct
interaction with him.”
In 1950, Mayr joined the Laboratory’s board of directors, serving until 1958.
Tenyearslater,JamesD.WatsonbecamedirectoroftheColdSpringHarbor