Outlook Stephen Jay Gould, University whose and prolific output of essays helped to reinvigorate the field of palacontology, died Manhattan. He was 60.
he cause was cancer, said his wife, Rhonda Roland One of the most influential evolutionary biologists of the 20th century and perhaps the best known since Charles Darwin, Dr Gould touched off numerous rethink sometimes lutionary patterns and proOne of his best known theories, developed with Niles Eldredge, argued that evolutionary change in the fossil record came in fits and starts of slow change.
This theory, known as punctuated equilibrium, was part of Gould's work that brought a forsaken palaconcological perspective to the evolutionary mainstream.
Gould achieved a fame unprecedented among modern evolutionary biologists. form on "The Simpsons,". and renovations of his SoHo loft in Manhattan were featured in a glowing article in Architectural Digest.
Famed for both brilliance and arrogance, Gould was the object of admiration and jealousy, both revered and reviled by colleagues.
Outside of academia, Gould was almost universally adored by those familiar with his work. In his column in Natural History magazine, he wrote in a learned Harvard professor man. The Cal Ripken Jr. of meditation for cach of 300 consecutive issues starting in 1974 and ending in 2001.
Many were collected into best-selling books like "Bully for Brontosaurus."
Other popular books by Gould include "Wonderful Life," which examines the evolution of carly life as recorded in the fossils of the Burgess Shale, and "The Mismeasure of Man," a rebuttal to what Gould described as pseudoscientific theories used to defend racist Bacologics D r. Gould was born on Sept. 10, 1941, in of Leonard Gould, a court stenographer, and Elcanor Goula, an artist and entrepreneur. Dr Gould career in palacontology as a 5-year-old when he visited the American Museum of Natural History with his father.
"I dreamed of becoming a scientist, in general, and a palacontologist, in particu lar, ever since the awed and scared me," he ing filled with fossils and the Yankees, he attended P.S. 26 and Jamaica High School. He then carolica at andoca College in Ohio, where he in geology in 1963.
In 1967, he received a doccorate in palacontology from Columbia University and went on to teach at Harvard, When won Soci rest of his career.
But it was in graduate school that Gould and Eldredge, a fellow graduate student, now a palacontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, began sowing the seeds for the most famous of the stillroiling debates that he is credited with helping to Studying the fossil record, the two students could not hnd the cradual, continuou change in fossil forms that stuff of evolution. Instead ances of new fossil forms (sudden, that is, on the achingly slow geological time scale) followed by long periods in which these organisms changed little.
Evolutionary biologists had always ascribed such difficulties to the famous ness of the fossil record. Bat in 1972, the two proposed the theory of punctionary suggestion that the The bare bones of the problem: Gould's main specialty was palacontolony sudden appearances and lack of change were, in fact, real.
According to the theory, there are long periods of time, sometimes millions of years, during which species change little, if at all. Intermittently, new species arise, and there is rapid erolutionary change on a geological time scale (still interminably slow on human Science /obituary thesizing Darwin's original contoulous io macrocyu"It is a heavyweight work," wrote Dr. Mark Ridley, an evolutionary biologist at University of Oxford in England. And despite sometimes "almost pathological logorrhea® at 1,433 pages, Ridley went on, 'it is still a magnificent summary of a quarter-century of influential thinking and a major publishing event in evolutionary biology:" Gould was dogged by file critics. Some argued that equilibrium, were so malleable and difficult to pin down that they were essentially untestable. After once proclaiming that Gould had brought palacontology back to the high table of evolutionary theory, Dr. John Maynard Smith, an evolutionary biol ogist at University of Sussex in England, wrote that other "tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with." Sometimes these criticisms descended into accusations that were as personal as intellectual. Punctuated equilibrium, for example, as been called "evolution Some who study smallerscale evolution within species, called microevolutionists, reject Gould's arguments that there are unique features to large-scale evolution, or macroevolution. nstead, they say that macroevolution is microevolution plaved out over long periods. Gould also had heated bar"Gould has given biolo- researchers using a particugists a new way to see the lar method of studying aniorganisms they study. wrote many there who reject his Dr. Stan Rachootin, an evoideas as well. lutionary biologist at Mount Others criticized him for Holyoke College. Many championing theories that credit the book with helping to inspire the new field of challenge parts of the modHern Darwinian framework, evo-dero. or the study of an act some see as aiding evolution and development.
and abetting creationists. Yet ould and Dr. Gould was a visible oppoRichard nent of efforts to get evoluLewontin, also at tion out of the classroom. An entertaining writer claborated on the dying art form of the scienVoting that in N Setter Sioo Gould dodged bullets and drug runners to collect specimens of Cerion and their fossils. Dr. Sally Walker, who studies Cerion at the University of Georgia, once said, "That guy can drive down the left side of the road," which is required in the Bahamas, "then jump out the door and find Cerion Then, she recalled, this multilingual student of classical music and astronomy and countless other eclectia might joyously break out into Gilbert and Sullivan song. Gould had an carlier battle with cancer in 1982. When abdominal mesothelioma was diagnosed, he reacted by dragging himself to Harvard's medical library as soon as he could walk. titled, "The Median is not the Message," he described discovering that the median survival time after diagnosis was a mere eight months. Rather than giving up hope, he wrote that he used his knowledge of statistics to translate an apparent death sentence into the hopeful realization that half those in whom the disease was diagnow sure one H longer, giving him the strength to fight on.
"When my skein runs out, hone to face the end calmiy and in my own way," he wrote. However. "death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light."
H survived the experimental treatment, but died ol an unrelated cancer, in a bed in his Horary among ass ocioveu books.
Gould received innumerable awards and bonours, including a MacArthur "genius" grant the first year they were awarded. He served as president of the American Association lot the Advancement of Science,