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Biography
Biography Since then Gould has become a world-renowned paleontologist and writer. For over thirty years, he wrote the column "This View of Life" for Natural History magazine, in which he demystified academic science for a widespread audience. His ability to make biology relevant to the "here and now" was paramount to his success and popular following. His 1980 book The Panda's Thumb sold more than a million copies in North America alone. Gould explores topics which range from the paper wrapper of a drinking straw to a small tropical snail called the Cerion; he speaks as emphatically about Joe DiMaggio as he does about Darwin. As a scholar, Gould developed and influenced crucial debates of the biological and geological sciences. In Wonderful Life (1989), he examined rare fossils found in the Canadian Rockies' Burgess Shale region, arguing that these fossils represent the "road less taken" in the history of life. His book Questioning the Millennium (1997) discusses the human need to impose "arbitrary demarcations" upon the irregularities of the universe. Through
his research Gould became a leading thinker on theories of evolution,
devoting much of his writing to his views on this topic. His theory of
"Punctuated Equilibrium" showed that evolution does not have
to proceed at a snail's pace, but can occur relatively quickly when given
the opportunity. For example, when the dinosaurs and most forms of life
became extinct 65 million years ago, small, burrowing mammals survived
and evolved into modern day mammals. Their evolution sped up because of
that sudden event. He believed that evolution does not progress smoothly
and gradually, but rather that it proceeds in fits and starts and is often
determined by random, chance events. Gould has written hundreds of essays, reviews, and articles. He was a dynamic lecturer and has been praised by Publishers Weekly as a writer who "artfully transports readers through the complex and enchanting realms of the natural world." Gould served as Professor of Zoology and of Geology at Harvard, where he gained a reputation as one of its most visible and engaging instructors. Stephen Jay Gould died in May, 2002. Excerpted
from the essay "The Glory of His Time and Ours" that appeared
in The Lying Stones of Marrakech (2000) I first
saw Joe DiMaggio play near the end of his career in 1950, when I was eight
and Joe had his last great season, batting .301 with 32 homers and 122
RBIs. He became my hero, my model, and my mentor, all rolled up into one
remarkable man. (I longed to be his replacement in center field, but a
guy named Mantle came along and beat me out for the job.) DiMaggio remained
my primary hero to the day of his death, and through all the vicissitudes
of Ms. Monroe, Mr. Coffee, and Mrs. Robinson. Even with
my untutored child's eyes, I could sense something supremely special about
DiMaggio's play. I didn't even know the words or their meanings, but I
grasped his gracefulness in some visceral way, and I knew that an aura
of majesty surrounded all his actions. He played every aspect of baseball
with a fluid beauty in minimal motion, a spare elegance that made even
his swinging strikeouts look beautiful (an infrequent occurrence in his
career; no other leading home run hitter has ever posted more than twice
as many lifetime walks as strikeouts or, even more amazingly, nearly as
many homers as whiffs—361 dingers versus 369 Ks. Compare this with
his two great Yankee long-ball compatriots: 714 homers and 1330 Ks for
Ruth, 536 homers and 1710 Ks for Mantle). His stance,
his home run trot, those long flyouts to the cavernous left-center space
in Yankee Stadium, his apparently effortless loping run—no hot dog
he—to arrive under every catchable fly ball at exactly the right
place and time for an "easy" out. If the sports cliché
of "poetry in motion" ever held real meaning, DiMaggio must
have been the intended prototype.
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