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February 4, 2005
Ernst Mayr, the eminent evolutionary biologist and arguably one of the most influential scientists of the 20th century, died Thursday morning (February 3) at the age of 100
Mayr, known for his work on speciation and contributions to the modern evolutionary synthesis of the 1940s, died at a retirement community in Bedford, Mass., the Harvard university said.
Mayr believed that behind every good speciation biologist stood a good naturalist. "People without that naturalist experience don't have that feeling," he told The Scientist in 2003. "They don't know species."