G. Ledyard Stebbins

George Ledyard Stebbins ( born January 6, 1906 in Lawrence, New York, † January 19th, 2000 in Davis, California ) was an American botanist, geneticist and evolutionary biologist. He was one of the architects of the synthetic theory of evolution, which covered the portion of botany. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Stebbins ".

Life

George Ledyard Stebbins, Jr. was born on January 6, 1906 in Lawrence in the U.S. state of New York. He grew up in Pasadena, Colorado Springs and Santa Barbara. In 1924 he began to study law at Harvard University. The following year he moved to botany. In 1928 he achieved his MD in 1931 he graduated (Ph. D. ). Stebbins married in 1930 Margaret Chamber Laine; they separated in 1948. They had three children, Robert, Edith and George. 1931-1935 he spent at Colgate University.

1935 he was a research position offered, and in 1939 he was officially employed at the University of California, Berkeley, where he gave a lecture on the principles of evolution. In 1947 he was appointed professor of genetics at the University of California, Berkeley, named. In 1947 he spent three months at Columbia University in New York City. Here Stebbins developed with its Jessup Lecture one of the most important books on the evolution of plants, Variation and Evolution in Plants, which was published in 1950.

In 1950 he was entrusted with the establishment of a genetics department at the Davis campus. Here he examined especially the flora of California. According to him, some species discovered by him are named. In 1958 he married Barbara Monaghan. In 1971, he managed to fetch Theodosius Dobzhansky and his colleagues Francisco J. Ayala according to Davis ( California). As president of the California Native Plant Society from 1966 to 1972, he campaigned for the protection of local endangered plants and their habitat in California. 1980 Cold Canyon Reserve was named after him. After his retirement in 1973, he traveled a lot, did some research and wrote books.

George Ledyard Stebbins died on 19 January 2000 in Davis (California ) at the age of 94 years.

Honors

  • Member of the National Academy of Science ( 1952)
  • Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1953 )
  • Member of the American Philosophical Society (1961 )
  • Honorary Doctor of the University of Paris (1962 )
  • Member of the Leopoldina (1972 )
  • Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society of London (1973 )
  • National Medal of Science ( 1979)
  • "Foreign Member" of the Royal Society (1999)

Works

  • Variation and Evolution in Plants (1950 )
  • Evolutionary processes (orig. "Processes of organic evolution" ) (1966, 1980) ISBN 3-437-20212- X
  • The Basis of Progressive Evolution ( 1969)
  • Chromosomal Evolution in Higher Plants (1971 )
  • Flowering Plants: Evolution Above the Species Level (1974 )
  • Evolution ( 1977) with co-authors Dobzhansky, Francisco Ayala and James Valentine
  • Darwin to DNA, Molecules to Humanity (1982 )
  • California 's Wild Gardens: A Living Legacy (1996 )
Pasadena, California Colorado Springs, Colorado Santa Barbara, California Julian Huxley Bernhard Rensch International Plant Names Index Integrated Authority File
357752
de