24 Facts About Richard Lewontin

Richard Charles Lewontin was an American evolutionary biologist, mathematician, geneticist, and social commentator.

Hubby in the journal Genetics, Lewontin helped set the stage for the modern field of molecular evolution.

From a sociological perspective, Richard Lewontin strongly opposed genetic determinism and neodarwinism as expressed in the fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.

Richard Lewontin was born in New York City to parents descended from late 19th-century Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants.

Richard Lewontin's father was a broker of textiles, and his mother a homemaker.

Richard Lewontin attended Forest Hills High School and the Ecole Libre des Hautes Etudes in New York.

In 1952, Richard Lewontin received an MS degree in mathematical statistics, followed by a PhD degree in zoology in 1954, both from Columbia University, where he was a student of Theodosius Dobzhansky.

Richard Lewontin held faculty positions at North Carolina State University, the University of Rochester, and the University of Chicago.

In 1973 Richard Lewontin was appointed as Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University, holding the position until 1998.

Richard Lewontin has worked with and had great influence on many philosophers of biology, including William C Wimsatt, Elliott Sober, Philip Kitcher, Elisabeth Lloyd, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Sahotra Sarkar, and Robert Brandon, often inviting them to work in his lab.

Since 2013, Richard Lewontin has been listed on the Advisory Council of the National Center for Science Education.

Richard Lewontin was an early proponent of a hierarchy of levels of selection in his article, "The Units of Selection".

Richard Lewontin has been a major influence on philosophers of biology, notably William C Wimsatt, Robert Brandon and Elisabeth Lloyd, Philip Kitcher, Elliott Sober, and Sahotra Sarkar.

In "Organism and Environment" in Scientia, and in more popular form in the last chapter of Biology as Ideology, Richard Lewontin argued that while traditional Darwinism has portrayed the organism as a passive recipient of environmental influences, a correct understanding should emphasize the organism as an active constructor of its own environment.

Richard Lewontin instead believed in a constructivist view, in which the organism is a function of the organism and environment, with the environment being a function of the organism and environment as well.

Richard Lewontin said that his more general, technical criticism of adaptationism grew out of his recognition that the fallacies of sociobiology reflect fundamentally flawed assumptions of adaptiveness of all traits in much of the modern evolutionary synthesis.

Richard Lewontin accused neo-Darwinists of telling Just-So Stories when they try to show how natural selection explains such novelties as long-necked giraffes.

Such concerns about what he viewed as the oversimplification of genetics led Richard Lewontin to be a frequent participant in debates, and an active life as a public intellectual.

Richard Lewontin lectured widely to promote his views on evolutionary biology and science.

Richard Lewontin wrote that attacking Lewontin's motives amounts to an ad hominem argument.

Richard Lewontin has contended that hybrid corn was developed and propagated not because of its superior quality, but because it allowed agribusiness corporations to force farmers to buy new seed each year rather than plant seed produced by their previous crop of corn.

Richard Lewontin testified in an unsuccessful suit in California challenging the state's financing of research to develop automatic tomato pickers.

Richard Lewontin served many years as a volunteer fireman in Marlboro and served as a trustee for the Marlboro Music Festival.

Richard Lewontin died at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts on July 4,2021, at the age of 92.