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First edition, first printing. An association copy signed by Ernst Mayr and inscribed to James W. Atz on the front free endpaper, whom Mayr maintained correspondence with. Atz was the associate curator at the New York Aquarium, authored several books on aquarium fishes, and in 1960 held an honorary position as a research associate in the Department of Animal Behavior at the American Museum of Natural History before eventually becoming a curator there. Ernst Mayr had spent 22 years at the American Museum of Natural History, exiting shortly before Atz's arrival. Bound in publisher's original dark blue cloth with spine lettered in gilt. Near Fine with light wear to the cloth, slight creases to backstrip, Atz's name and date penned to the front paste down. Several markings throughout text and heavier marking to "literature" section at rear, including a number circled in a chart on page 75, with a holograph notation reading "Thanks Jeremy [?] for helping in getting these data [signed] Myron London [?]. Ernst Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, philosopher of biology, and historian of science. His work contributed to the conceptual revolution that led to the modern evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics, systematics, and Darwinian evolution, and to the development of the biological species concept. His theory of peripatric speciation (a more precise form of allopatric speciation which he advanced), based on his work on birds, is still considered a leading mode of speciation, and was the theoretical underpinning for the theory of punctuated equilibrium, proposed by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. Mayr is sometimes credited with inventing modern philosophy of biology, particularly the part related to evolutionary biology, which he distinguished from physics due to its introduction of (natural) history into science.
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