Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
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Stephen Jay Gould
(10 Sep 1941 - 20 May 2002)
American palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist, science historian and author who was a frequent and popular speaker on the sciences. His published work includes both scholarly study and many prize-winning popular collections of essays.
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Stephen Jay Gould - Mary Anning
Illustrated Quote - Large (800 x 600 px)
“Mary Anning [is] probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology.”
— Stephen Jay Gould
Quoted in Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors (1992).
This quote appears in a book written by Stephen Gould with photographs by Rosamond Purcell. It appears in the paragraph introducing the collector Mary Anning:
Mary Anning, probably the most important unsung (or inadequately sung) collecting force in the history of paleontology, was the daughter of a carpenter who supplemented his living, as so many citizens of Lyme Regis did (and still do), by selling shells and fossils to vacationers.
When Anning was twelve, soon after her fathers death, she found one of the first English ichthyosaurs in 1812. By good fortune, the naturalist Sir Everard Home was visiting Lyme Regis at the time, and encouraged Anning’s work by praise for her industry and money for her specimen.
Other collectors described in Gould’s book are Peter the Great, Phillip Von Siebold, Willern Von Heurn, Eugen Dubois, Walter Rothschild, Agostino Scilla, Thomas Hawkins and Louis Agassiz. Gould's description accompany precise and beautiful photographs by Rosamond Purcell.
In Stephen Jay Gould and Rosamond Wolffe Purcell,
Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors (1992), 100.
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See also:
- Science Quotes by Stephen Jay Gould.
- 10 Sep - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Gould's birth.
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Stephen Jay Gould - context of quote Mary Anning - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
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Stephen Jay Gould - context of quote Honorable errors…not…failures in science - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
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Stephen Jay Gould - context of quote Honorable errors…not…failures in science - Large image (800 x 600 px)
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Stephen Jay Gould - context of quote The status of Galileo - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
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Stephen Jay Gould - context of quote The status of Galileo - Large image (800 x 600 px)
- Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life, by Patricia Kelley, Robert Ross and Warren D. Allmon (ed.). - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Stephen Jay Gould.
Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) --
Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.
Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...
(more by Sagan) Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...
(more by Einstein) Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...
(more by Feynman)