Richard C. Lewontin, Eminent Geneticist With a Sharp Pen, Dies at 92
He demonstrated that differences in DNA between groups of people were far smaller than originally believed. He was also a noted opponent of aspects of sociobiology.
Richard C. Lewontin, widely considered one of the most brilliant geneticists of the modern era and a prolific, elegant and often caustic writer who condemned the facile use of genetics and evolutionary biology to “explain” human nature, died on Sunday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 92.
A pioneer in the study of genetic variation among humans and other animals, Dr. Lewontin spent the bulk of his career at Harvard University. Many of his students and colleagues regarded him with an awe that tipped toward reverence, describing him as equally gifted at abstruse quantitative research, popular writing and public speaking; a Renaissance scholar who spoke fluent French, wrote treatises in Italian, worked with Buckminster Fuller on his geodesic domes andplayed chamber music on the clarinet with his pianist wife, Mary Jane. He was also a volunteer firefighter and a self-described Marxist who chopped his own wood.
Not everyone was enamored of Dr. Lewontin. He famously clashed with another eminence and literary light at Harvard: Edward O. Wilson, a founder of sociobiology, the field that seeks to trace the roots of behavior in evolution. Dr. Lewontin considered Dr. Wilson a naïve genetic determinist and once derided him as a “corpse in the elevator.”
