Stephen Jay Gould
10 September 1941 – 20 May 2002
Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and historian of science who spent his career at Harvard University. With Niles Eldredge he proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium in 1972, and for twenty-five years he wrote a monthly column in Natural History magazine that formed the basis of several essay collections. His books include The Mismeasure of Man and The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.
Lived at the same time
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- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Overlapped 61 years →
- Alex Ferguson (1941–present) Overlapped 61 years →
- Ali Khamenei (1939–2026) Overlapped 61 years →
- Alice Munro (1931–2024) Overlapped 61 years →
Life events
Born to Leonard Gould, a court stenographer, and Eleanor Rosenberg.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgTook a bachelor's degree in geology in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgCompleted a PhD on the land snail genus Poecilozonites in Bermuda.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAppointed to teach geology and later became a curator at the Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgTheir paper argued that the fossil record shows long periods of stasis interrupted by rapid speciation events.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgWrote 300 consecutive monthly essays until the column ended in 2001.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHis critique of biological determinism and intelligence testing won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgHe recovered after treatment and later wrote the essay "The Median Isn't the Message" about the diagnosis.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgA 1,400-page synthesis of his views on evolutionary theory, issued shortly before his death.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDied of metastatic adenocarcinoma, a cancer unrelated to his earlier mesothelioma.
Source: en.wikipedia.org