Summary: Appreciation of ErnstMayr’s Science

Abstract

As a young naturalist Ernst Mayr became familiar with the birds of his native Germany in the years afterWorldWar I and spent every free minute of his time in the woods and fields watching falcons, thrushes and warblers and along the lakes and rivers observing ducks and plovers. Following a family tradition he entered medical school in 1923, but soon cameunder the influence ofDr.Erwin Stresemann (1889–1972) in Berlin, the country’s leading ornithologist, who saw in this young student “a rising star, of fabulous systematic instinct.” He enticed him to switch to zoology by offering to place him on an expedition to the tropics after finishing his PhD dissertation. This had beenMayr’s dream since he was a boy and he could not resist. Hemoved to the University of Berlin and accepted a dissertation topic from Erwin Stresemann passing his PhD examination summa cum laude in June 1926. The foundation of all of Mayr’s later theoretical interests in species and speciation, evolution, and the history and philosophy of biology was laid during his student days. Already in 1924, when he was 19 years old, he discussed with Stresemann the species question, the analysis of phylogenetic relations among closely related bird species, rates of differentiation, and convergence (from a Lamarckian point of view). The subject of human inheritance and genetics fascinated him since he was a medical student. Already in 1927Mayr deplored in print “how little geneticists and systematists cooperate even today.”