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Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould ( ; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an Evolutionary biologist, paleontologist, and historian of science. He received more than 40 honorary degrees during his lifetime. Gould spent most of his career teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History and remains one of the most influential and widely read popular science writers of his generation. In 1996, Gould was hired as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University and was named a Library of Congress "Living Legend" in 2000. Gould was known by the general public mainly for his 300 popular essays in ''Natural History'' magazine, and his numerous books written for both the specialist and non-specialist.

Gould served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science from 1999 to 2001 and was a member of several distinguished scholarly organizations, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Linnean Society of London. In 1998, Gould co-founded the Art Science Research Lab with the artist and sculptor Rhonda Roland Shearer, his second wife, and towards the end of his career took an interest in Marcel Duchamp's contributions to the history of art and science. ASRL oversaw the donation of the Stephen Jay Gould Archives to Stanford University.

Gould's most significant contribution to evolutionary biology was the theory of punctuated equilibrium developed with Niles Eldredge in 1972. His theory proposing that most evolution is characterized by long periods of evolutionary stability, infrequently punctuated by swift periods of branching speciation was contrasted against phyletic gradualism, the popular idea that evolutionary change is marked by a pattern of smooth and continuous change in the fossil record.

Most of Gould's empirical research was based on the land snail genera ''Poecilozonites'' and ''Cerion''. He also made important contributions to evolutionary developmental biology, receiving broad professional recognition for his book ''Ontogeny and Phylogeny''. In evolutionary theory he opposed strict selectionism, sociobiology as applied to humans, and evolutionary psychology. He campaigned against creationism and proposed that science and religion should be considered two distinct fields (or "non-overlapping magisteria") whose authorities do not overlap. Provided by Wikipedia