"In 1859 Darwin published his theory of common descent through natural selection. I don't think there has ever been a set of theories so heavily attacked or that has had so many alternative theories to face. Look at it now. It stands there, not a dent in it,' said Ernst Mayr, (then) Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Emeritus at Harvard University in 1994. What he didn't say, but didn't need to, to anybody followed a century-long natural selection vs genetics debate all through 20th century, was the seminal role he played to ensure Charles Darwin's work survived unscathed.

Mayr, who significantly contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution, passed away on February 3, 2005, in Bedford, Massachusetts, a few months after he turned 100.

Another major contribution in evolutionary biology by Mayr was to champion of a different form of species formation, allopatric speciation. In his classic 1942 book