Ernst+Mayr

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 * Ernst Mayr was born on July 5, 1904 in Kepten, Germany. Mayr had showed great interest in science. His father, Dr. Otto Mayr was thought to be the one responsible for Ernst's interest in the subject. Ernst had been on many "field trips" to the Museum of Natural History with his dad. His father died when he was only thirteen. Being so young, Ernst took the death of his father quite hard.. After a short period of time, Mayr and his family moved to Dresden where he completed his high school education at Staatsgymnasium ("Royal Gymnasium") in 1922. During his time in high school, he had joined the Saxony Ornithologists' Association, where he met his mentor Rudolf Zimmermann. ** **In February of 1923, he passed his Abitur examination, an exam taken at the end of a pupil's education to graduate. As a reward, his mother gave him his first pair of binoculars. In March 1923, he was the first to spot the Red-Crested Pochard; a rare species of duck that had not been seen in Saxony since 1845. Due to the extremely rare sighting, many people who refused to believe this began to argue about what the bird actually was. No solution to this argument had been found. When he was twenty-one, he graduated from the University of Berlin. it was there that he earned his doctorate in ornithology. The Museum of the University of Berlin offered him a position in June of 1926 which he accepted. Mayr traveled to New Guinea the next year for the International Zoological Congress. Mayr collected several thousand bird skins, and he had even named 26 new bird species during this time. During the early 1930's, he returned to Germany where he was invited to work at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York. In 1942, while working in New York he ended up publishing his first book called Systematics and the Origin of Species. This book completed the evolutionary synthesis started by Charles Darwin. In this book, he talked about how different species could evolve from one common ancestor. He came to the conclusion that parts of a species disbanded from the main group. This is called an "isolation mechanism." These species adapted and bred with each other overtime and were not able to breed with their original ancestors because of it. This created multiple species from one common ancestor. In 1953 he worked at Harvard where he was appointed as the director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. He held that title from 1961 to 1970. Mayr retired in 1975 as a professor of Zoology. Throughout his life he has written over 200 articles twenty-five written books. Fourteen of his books were published after he turned 65 years old. He died in Massachusetts at age 100 on February 3, 2005.**




 * Ernst Mayr - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved January 15, 2013, from  [] **


 * Ernst Mayr Biography -- Academy of Achievement. (n.d.). Academy of Achievement Main Menu. Retrieved January 15, 2013, from [] **


 * Evolution: Library: Ernst Mayr and the Evolutionary Synthesis. (n.d.). PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved January 17, 2013, from** http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/06/2/l_062_01.html