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Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould dies

By Tim McLaughlin

BOSTON, May 20 (Reuters) - Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who unlocked the
mysteries of evolution for millions of readers with essays on the panda's
extra thumb and helped bring natural history museums to popular audiences,
died on Monday at his home in New York after a long battle with cancer.

Gould, a Harvard professor best known for modifying Charles Darwin's
theories, died at 10:35 a.m. EDT (1435 GMT), a spokeswoman at his Harvard
office said. He was 60.

Some of Gould's best-known works are "Ever Since Darwin," "The Panda's
Thumb," which won an American Book Award in 1981, and "The Mismeasure of
Man," which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1982.

"He connected science with other areas of pursuit such as baseball... Most
people aren't scientists. They need those connections," said Michael Novacek,
provost of science at New York's American Museum of Natural History.

"Probably more than anyone else, he provided a contextual sense of science
that was incredibly effective. His writings influenced so many people,
scientists and nonscientists."

A Harvard professor since age 26, Gould wrote chatty, educational essays
using unusual details such as the flamingo's smile or the panda's extra thumb
to introduce readers to more general themes in an exciting way.

In "The Panda's Thumb," discussing a type of mite, he wrote: "Fifteen eggs,
including but a single male, develop within the mother's body. The male
emerges within his mother's shell, copulates with all his sisters and dies
before birth.

"It may not sound like much of a life, but the male Acarophenax does as much
for its evolutionary continuity as Abraham did in fathering children into his
10th decade."

CHOCOLATE BARS TO LAND SNAILS

Technically his field was fossils but Gould taught geology, biology, zoology
and the history of science, and wrote about everything from chocolate bars to
baseball to Bahamian land snails -- on which he was probably the world's
foremost expert.

"Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information," Gould wrote in
his 1977 book "Ever Since Darwin." "It is a creative human activity, its
geniuses acting more as artists than as information processors."

In July 1981, when he was 40, Gould learned he had abdominal mesothelioma, a
rare and deadly form of cancer that is usually associated with exposure to
asbestos.

Gould researched the disease and wrote in an article in Discover magazine in
June 1985: "The literature couldn't have been more brutally clear.
Mesothelioma is incurable, with a median mortality of only eight months after
discovery."

He went on to say that "most people, without training in statistics, would
read such a statement as, 'I will probably be dead in eight months."'

But he added, "all evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is
nature's only irreducible essence. ... I had to place myself amidst the
variation."

During his illness, Gould continued to write and teach while undergoing
experimental treatment for the disease.

Born on Sept. 10, 1941, in New York, Gould decided to be a paleontologist
after his first sight, at age 5, of a 20-foot (6-metre) high reconstructed
dinosaur in the American Museum of Natural History.


   05/20/02 18:56 ET


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