Stephen Jay Gould, Dead at 60

I'm saddened by the news of Gould's too untimely death. I started reading
his essays during my 2nd year in grad school, hoping to learn a bit of
biology and steal tricks from his really lovely prose style. I'm not sure
whether I learned more biology or rhetoric from Gould, but I got a lot of
readerly *jouissance* from his popular essays. And few televised interludes
were as rich as listening to Gould expound, both giddily and scholarly,
about baseball, a sport I don't much care for, a fact which Gould made me
regret.

His insistence on poking fun and anti-evolutionary religious forces made him
an important voice from the liberal left, one that will be missed.

Kendall Clark

--
BOSTON- Stephen Jay Gould, one of the world's best-known scientists and a
witty, prolific author who influenced the national debate on evolution and
science standards in schools, died Monday. He was 60.

Gould died of cancer at his home in New York City, according to his
assistant, Stephanie Schur.

Gould, a Harvard University professor, joined the faculty in 1967 as a
professor of geology. He advanced to associate professor in 1971 and to
professor in 1973.

Gould was a best-selling author who was enamored of the mysteries of
evolution. He was known for his engaging, often witty style evident in his
collections of essays, which included "Ever Since Darwin", "The Panda's
Thumb", and "The Mismeasure of Man," a study of intelligence testing and
winner of the National Book Critics Award in 1982.

Much of Gould's work focused on the land snails of the West Indies, which he
occasionally used to support a point in his articles for general readers.

One of America's best-known scientists, Gould wrote books that sought to
make complex debates about geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology
accessible to the public.

He analyzed evolutionary theory - criticizing elements of it at points -
with comparisons to a range of disciplines, including popular culture and
sports.

One of his most-championed causes was the idea of "punctuated equilibria" in
which he emphasized that evolution consisted of relatively rapid spurts of
species evolution rather than gradual, continuous transformations.

He also emphasized the importance of statistics in studying evolutionary
variation, comparing the demise of the .400 hitter in baseball to the
process by which evolutionary "outliers" disappeared.

Gould received his bachelor's degree from Antioch College in 1963 and
enrolled in Columbia University. For his doctoral dissertation, Gould
investigated fossil land snails of Bermuda. Gould also did work toward his
doctorate at the American Museum of Natural History.

In one of his essays about evolution, "Darwin's Middle Road," which he wrote
for his monthly column in Natural History magazine, Gould once said, "If
genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and
the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields."

Gould was also the recipient of several other awards including the National
Magazine Award for Essays and Criticism for his column in Natural History in
1980 and the American Book Award in science for "Panda's Thumb" in 1981.

In 1975, Gould received the Schuchert Award, given each year by the
Paleontological Society for excellence in research to a paleontologist under
40.