MOUNT VERNON — Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould, an evolutionary biologist and popular science writer, will lecture on “The Science of Evolution and the Politics of Creationism,” then participate in a discussion with faculty members at Cornell College on Friday, Nov. 2. The lecture is at 11 a.m. and the discussion is at 1:30 p.m., both in King Chapel. Admission is free.
Gould’s visit is for the annual Earhart-Cornell Lecture series, “The Liberal Arts and the Public Square,” funded by the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor, Mich. The discussion will feature formal responses by Cornell biology professor Andrew McCollum and computer science professor Leon Tabak. Mary Iber, consulting librarian for the sciences at Cornell’s Cole Library, will be the moderator.
Gould is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, professor of geology and curator of invertebrate paleontology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He is well-known for the theory of punctuated equilibrium he developed in 1972 with Niles Eldredge. They theorized that the evolution of species proceeds with long periods of relative stability interspersed with periods of relatively rapid — thousands of years, in geological terms — change. Prior to this work, most evolutionary biologists viewed evolutionary change as a slower, more gradual process of change.
A prolific writer on science for the general public, Gould’s column, “This View of Life,” ran for 27 years in Natural History magazine. He has written, contributed to or edited more than two dozen books, many dealing with controversies in evolutionary biology and paleontology, including “Ontogeny and Phylogeny” (1977), “Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time” (1987), “Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History” (1995) and “Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life” (1999).
He has earned more than a dozen literary honors, including Britain’s leading award for science books, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, for “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History” (1989), a best seller about a highly diverse array of fossils from 550 million years ago found in western Canada. “The Mismeasure of Man” (1981), about intelligence testing, won a National Book Critics Circle Award.
“Gould is one part Harvard intellectual, nine parts curious little boy; that’s one element of his distinctive appeal,” noted a reviewer in the Washington Post Book World.
Gould has received more than 50 academic medals and awards, including the Gold Medal for Service to Zoology from the Linnaean Society of London, and the Edinburgh Medal, one of Scotland’s highest scientific accolades; has been selected as a member or fellow of several elite learned societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences; and has been awarded more than 40 honorary degrees from colleges and universities. He is a past-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Paleontological Society.
Gould earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from Antioch College and a doctorate from Columbia University. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1967.
Gould’s is the fourth lecture in the annual Earhart-Cornell Lecture series, which previously has featured Stephen Carter, Yale University law professor and author; Walter Williams, economist, columnist and commentator; and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.