Mayr, Ernst Walter (1904–2005)

German-born US zoologist who was influential in the development of modern evolutionary theories. He led a two-year expedition to New Guinea and the Solomon Islands where he studied the effects of founder populations and speciation on the evolution of the indigenous birds and animals. This research caused him to support neo-Darwinism, a synthesis of the ideas of Darwin and Mendel, being developed at that time.

Mayr was born in Kempten, Germany. He studied medicine at Greifswald University 1923–25 and graduated with a PhD from the University of Berlin in 1926, where he continued to work until 1930. He carried out taxonomic research at the American Museum of Natural History in New York 1931–53 where he was responsible for avian taxonomy. He published more than 100 papers in this area, including Birds of the Southwest Pacific (1945). In 1937 he contributed to Dobzhansky's Genetics and the Origin of Species, which outlined the neo-Darwininist synthesis of evolution and Mendelian genetics and was crucial in the widespread acceptance of the theory of evolution.

In 1950 he proposed an alternative classification for fossils, which included the hominid fossils and was widely accepted. He was appointed Alexander Agassiz professor of zoology at Harvard University in 1953, and from 1961 until his retirement in 1970, held the post of director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. He wrote and edited a number of books, including several upon the development of evolutionary thought, which have become standard texts on university courses.