Ernst Mayr, the last survivor of the intellectual giants who developed the modern version of the theory of evolution, turns 100 today. “Among the great evolutionary biologists of this century,” Mayr was called by Harvard sociobiologist and author Edward O. Wilson -- as well as “one of the best writers” on the topic. In biology, “everybody stands in some way in (Mayr’s) shadow,” said Professor F. Clark Howell, co-director of the Laboratory for Human Evolutionary Studies at UC Berkeley, who first met Mayr in 1946. “He’s done a huge amount of work and had a great influence.”
