Gould, Stephen Jay (1941- )

US palaeontologist and writer. In 1972 he proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium, suggesting that the evolution of species did not occur at a steady rate but could suddenly accelerate, with rapid change occurring over a few hundred thousand years. His books include Ever Since Darwin 1977, The Panda's Thumb 1980, The Flamingo's Smile 1985, and Wonderful Life 1990. Gould was born in New York and studied at Antioch College, Ohio, and Columbia University. He became professor of geology at Harvard 1973 and was later also given posts in the departments of zoology and the history of science. Gould has written extensively on several aspects of evolutionary science, in both professional and popular books. His Ontogeny and Phylogeny 1977 provided a detailed scholarly analysis of his work on the developmental process of recapitulation. In Wonderful Life he drew attention to the diversity of the fossil finds in the Burgess Shale Site in Yoho National Park, Canada, which he interprets as evidence of parallel early evolutionary trends extinguished by chance rather than natural selection.