Ernst Mayr
![Mayr in 1994](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Ernst_Mayr_PLoS.jpg)
Although Charles Darwin and others posited that multiple species could evolve from a single common ancestor, the mechanism by which this occurred was not understood, creating the ''species problem''. Ernst Mayr approached the problem with a new definition for species. In his book ''Systematics and the Origin of Species'' (1942) he wrote that a species is not just a group of morphologically similar individuals, but a group that can breed only among themselves, excluding all others. When populations within a species become isolated by geography, feeding strategy, mate choice, or other means, they may start to differ from other populations through genetic drift and natural selection, and over time may evolve into new species. The most significant and rapid genetic reorganization occurs in extremely small populations that have been isolated (as on islands).
His theory of peripatric speciation (a more precise form of allopatric speciation which he advanced), based on his work on birds, is still considered a leading mode of speciation, and was the theoretical underpinning for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. Mayr is sometimes credited with inventing modern philosophy of biology, particularly the part related to evolutionary biology, which he distinguished from physics due to its introduction of (natural) history into science. Provided by Wikipedia
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2by Mayr, Ernst, 1904-, Ewing, W. Maurice (William Maurice), 1906-, Bucher, Walter H. (Walter Herman), 1888-, Caster, Kenneth E., Dunbar, Carl Owen, 1891-, Kay, Marshall, 1904-1975., Simpson, George Gaylord, 1902-, Axelrod, Daniel I., Just, Theodor., Camp, Wendell Holmes, 1904-, Darlington, Philip Jackson, 1904-, Emerson, Alfred Edwards, 1896-, Schaeffer, Bobb, 1913-, Dunkle, David Hosbrook., Colbert, Edwin Harris, 1905-, Romer, Alfred S., Society for the Study of Evolution. Meeting (1949 : New York, N.Y.)Get access
Published 1952
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