Evolution popularizer Stephen Jay Gould dies
By Anne Barnard and Stephen Smith, Globe Staff, 5/21/2002
Dr. Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard paleontologist who brought the
science of evolution to a broad new audience, died
yesterday of metastasized lung cancer at his home in New York City.
He was 60 years old.
Dr. Gould, more than any other scientist of his generation, brought
to the public one of science's most fascinating quests:
understanding how life came to be and what that says - or does not
say - about human nature.
His prolific and sometimes controversial writing made him perhaps
the best-known science writer in the United States. He
explained evolution much the way Carl Sagan explained astronomy. He
was an outspoken foe of creationists, as well as some
fellow evolutionists with whom he clashed over differing theories.
Critics occasionally grumbled that he was more focused on celebrity
and commercialization than on rigorous science. Fans and
literary societies praised him for ''opening the floodgates,'' as
one of his longtime editors put it, to a whole new genre of
writing that brought home to laypeople the increasingly complicated
world of science.
''Steve did not try to make it simple; he tried and succeeded in
explaining the complications,'' said Richard Lewontin, a
professor of biology and zoology at Harvard. ''He made readers
appreciate how messy and variable life is.''
In 1974, Edwin Barber, senior editor at W. W. Norton & Co.,
persuaded Dr. Gould to start writing about science for the
public after coming across an essay in Natural History magazine in
which the young professor mused about the sizes and
shapes found in nature, explaining, for example, why elephants have big feet.
''He never wrote down to his audience - he always respected his
audience - but he was able to translate science by using
Gilbert and Sullivan, baseball, and any number of other things from
everyday life,'' Barber said.
In one memorable analogy, Dr. Gould, a lifelong Yankees fan who
nonetheless held season tickets at Fenway Park, compared
the gradual disappearance of extreme variation of size or shape in a
species to the way .400 hitters have become rarer as
baseball achieves a better balance between pitchers and batters, and
players cluster around the median batting average.
Dr. Gould was not only an advocate of evolutionary theory against
creationism, which he once called ''a local, indigenous,
American bizarre-ity,'' but he also was a vigorous fighter in the
intramural battles among evolutionary scientists.
In academia, Dr. Gould was best known for challenging the idea,
accepted since the time of Darwin, that life changed
gradually, evolving slowly and steadily. Beginning in the 1970s, Dr.
Gould and biologist Niles Eldredge argued that the story
of life on earth was instead a series of cataclysmic changes,
perhaps prompted by the impact of asteroids or climate
fluctuations, in which species evolved in quick spurts after long
chapters of little change.
The theory, called ''punctuated equilibrium,'' started a scientific
debate, at times bitter, that continues today. Critics
sometimes called it ''evolution by jerks,'' referring to the spasms
of change, as well as to the aggressiveness of its
proponents.
Dr. Gould was a prominent critic of the search for the evolutionary
basis of behavior, a field called sociobiology founded by
his Harvard colleague and archrival, E. O. Wilson.
But he and Wilson shared the naturalist's love of field work among
animals and fossils - almost old-fashioned in the era of
microbiology. That fascination took Dr. Gould from the relatively
mundane West Indian land snails that occupied much of his
research to the diverse and often oddly shaped fauna of the Burgess
Shale, a fossil bed in the Canadian Rockies.
Twenty years ago, Dr. Gould was diagnosed with a rare cancer called
mesothelioma, which affects the lining of the lungs and
is sometimes attributed to asbestos exposure. After losing 62 pounds
and coming close to death, Dr. Gould recovered - in
part, he wrote, by focusing on his statistical chances of survival.
''I could only say with the most fierce resolution, `Not yet
Lord, not yet.'''
That same determination and zest for life, friends said, kept him
working even after cancer struck again about two months
ago, invading his lungs and other parts of his body. To help him
keep up with his course schedule, his mother, Eleanor,
recently came to stay with Dr. Gould in the South End apartment he
maintained along with his New York home.
Dr. Gould had just published two career-capping works. The first, a
1,433-page academic tome called ''The Structure of
Evolutionary Theory,'' detailed, in a sense, the evolution of
evolutionary theory. It describes how Darwinism developed and
how some of its central assumptions have been challenged - with an
emphasis on his own theories.
Despite his illness, Dr. Gould made plans to go on tour this month
with his latest book: ''I Have Landed: The End of the
Beginning in Natural History.'' He was scheduled to sign the book at
the Harvard Square Coop today. His most personal
book, it took its title from his grandfather's statement upon
arriving in the United States from Hungary on Sept. 11, 1901, and
touched on moments of childhood wonder that prefigure his own
reverence of science and nature.
The book is a collection of essays published in Natural History,
essays he wrote 300 months in a row.
Ellen Goldensohn, editor of the magazine, said Dr. Gould's complex
columns never needed editing. ''He was the only person
we didn't touch,'' Goldensohn said. ''Even some other famous names I
won't mention need to be edited. I once remember a
sentence that went on for 17 lines, but it was utterly readable.''
Dr. Gould was renowned by friends and foes for an ego, big even by
Harvard standards. ''I once put him on hold - big
mistake,'' Goldensohn said. ''That was 12 or 15 years ago. He really
took me to task for that. He didn't have time for that.''
Friends and colleagues said Dr. Gould's loss would be deeply felt,
from Harvard, where he spent 35 years after arriving as a
relatively unknown professor in his mid-20s, to the Boston Cecilia,
a choral orchestral group in which he sang for about 30
years.
''Steve Gould always seemed larger than life,'' said Andrew Knoll, a
professor of Natural History at Harvard and a close
friend. ''I'm not sure he ever thought a small thought in his life.''
Somehow, amid his panoply of other commitments, Dr. Gould always
managed to show up for the choral society's Monday
night rehearsals at All Saints Church in Brookline. He was there
most recently two weeks ago, looking frail and gray. ''Still,
he sang his heart out,'' Boston Cecilia's music director, Donald
Teeters, said yesterday. ''It was so typical Steve Gould.''
Dr. Gould's interest in music was nurtured in the public schools of
his native New York City, Teeters said. It was a measure
of the intellectual ferment of his life that Dr. Gould favored
ornate, embroidered Wagnerian operas.
''He really liked the great works that went on for hours because it
really gave him a chance to submerge himself in the
works,'' Teeters said.
''Steve Gould was a star in Harvard's firmament,'' Jeremy R.
Knowles, dean of the university's faculty of arts and sciences,
said in a statement. ''The world is a sadly duller and a less
informed place without him.''
In addition to his mother, Eleanor, Dr. Gould leaves his wife,
Rhonda Roland Shearer of New York City, two stepchildren,
and two sons from a previous marriage, Ethan and Jesse. Funeral
arrangements have not been finalized.
Gareth Cook and Raja Mishra of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 5/21/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
