Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard palaeontologist, proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium with Niles Eldredge in 1972, and for nearly thirty years wrote a monthly essay for Natural History magazine, around 300 in all. Collections such as The Panda's Thumb and the book Wonderful Life, about the Burgess Shale fossils, made evolutionary biology lively for general readers. Some biologists felt he overstated his disagreements with them.