Posted on 07/04/2004 5:19:27 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Professor Ernst Mayr, the scientist renowned as the father of modern biology, will celebrate his 100th birthday tomorrow by leading a scathing attack on creationism.
The evolutionary biologist, who is already acclaimed as one of the most prolific researchers of all time, has no intention of retiring and is shortly to publish new research that dismantles the fashionable creationist doctrine of “intelligent design”.
Although he has reluctantly cut his workload since a serious bout of pneumonia 18 months ago, Prof. Mayr has remained an active scientist at Harvard University throughout his 90s. He has written five books since his 90th birthday and is researching five academic papers. One of these, scheduled to appear later this year, will examine how “intelligent design” — the latest way in which creationists have sought to present a divine origin of the world — was thoroughly refuted by Charles Darwin a century and a half ago.
His work is motivated in part by a sense of exasperation at the re-emergence of creationism in the USA, which he compares unfavourably with the widespread acceptance of evolution that he encountered while growing up in early 20th-century Germany.
The states of Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and Oklahoma currently omit the word “evolution” from their curriculums. The Alabama state board of education has voted to include disclaimers in textbooks describing evolution as a theory. In Georgia, the word “evolution” was banned from the science curriculum after the state’s schools superintendent described it as a “controversial buzzword”.
Fierce protest, including criticism from Jimmy Carter, the former President, reversed this.
Prof. Mayr, who will celebrate his 100th birthday at his holiday home in New Hampshire with his two daughters, five grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, was born on 5 July 1905 in Kempten, Germany. He took a PhD in zoology at the University of Berlin, before travelling to New Guinea in 1928 to study its diverse bird life. On his return in 1930 he emigrated to the USA. His most famous work, Systematics and the Origin of Species, was published in 1942 and is regarded still as a canonical work of biology.
It effectively founded the modern discipline by combining Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection with Gregor Mendel’s genetics, showing how the two were compatible. Prof. Mayr redefined what scientists mean by a species, using interbreeding as a guide. If two varieties of duck or vole do not interbreed, they cannot be the same species.
Prof. Mayr has won all three of the awards sometimes termed the “triple crown” of biology — the Balzan Prize, the Crafoord Prize and the International Prize for Biology. Although he formally retired in 1975, he has been active as an Emeritus Professor ever since and has recently written extensively on the philosophy of biology.
Impressive list. I didn't know the inventor of the MRI was an evo-skeptic.
This speaks to the grace and mercy of God. God gives him many year repent, but . . . .
science is a Theology. a Theology that calls God "Math"
Thanks!
Of course the scientists don't complain about the constant errors because they really enjoy being fawned over and the lack of tough questions.
For some, at 99 or 100, math can be a prollem even with a phD...;-)
It appears you've had a lapse of reason, Mr. Still-A-Democrat.
i agree with you there. i wont smite some guy for thinking the random chance is there, but i will be very skeptical of him.
of track here, but have you seen the website featuring the power of electricity, and just how massive it can be (i.e., its probable that a giant arc of lightning created the craters in the moon) interesting stuff.... just wondering :)
Happy 4th!
? he posted a link regarding how other studied men support the views of a fellow freeper of his.
what's his lapse of reason, may i ask?
Placemarker.
happy 4th all! :)
Oh, may I further qualify my response by stating the reporter is prolly more responsible for misfiguring than Prof. Mayr.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA! Never heard of peer review? Lead a sheltered life without intellectual rigor of any kind? Dream on in your little cocoon...
Are you really that naive?
Same to you.
Then I suggest that maybe we can't believe the rest of the article either.
enlighten me
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