Evolution quotes #27

Ernst Mayr is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Emeritus, of Harvard University and "has probably done as much as anyone to advance evolutionary theory and to entrench it at the core of all biological thought…He's one of the founders of modern neo-Darwinism and has restored natural selection to a central place in the theory of evolution."

Mayr has stated:

"Mendelian genetics did not seem to support the possibility of gradual adaptive changes, which Darwinism required. Geneticists favored the idea that species evolved suddenly through massive mutations. 'But we naturalists realized that species develop gradually. The only evolutionary theory that was gradual was Lamarckism, and so to oppose the mutationists, we all became Lamarckians."

John Rennie, "Profile: Ernst Mayr - Darwin's Current Bulldog," Scientific American, Aug. 1994, pp. 24-25

Related resources:

A who's who of evolutionists


Epigenetics


Still fighting...

Darwin and the search for an evolutionary mechanism