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Richard C. Lewontin Obituary Richard C. Lewontin (1929–2021) Pioneer of molecular evolution who campaigned against biological racism. ichard Lewontin was a groundbreak- ecologist Dick Levins and support from the ing geneticist, best known for bringing Ford Foundation, he assembled a group to molecular tools into evolutionary investigate the role of capital in agricultural biology and for his advocacy against research, such as the development of hybrid the use of science to rationalize struc- crop plants. Lewontin and Levins’s collabora- Rtural inequity. Lewontin and his collaborators tion also led to a series of essays on biology revealed how natural selection acts to shape and society from a Marxist perspective, pub- variation, exploring its effect on genes, groups lished later as The Dialectical Biologist (1985) and individuals. Moving between mathemat- and Biology Under the Influence (2007). Like ical and statistical analysis, fieldwork and his critiques of sociobiology, many of these laboratory experiment, they set the course essays treated science as politics, arguing of molecular population genetics. Lewontin against reductionism and determinism that saw no place for his discipline in attempts to favoured biological explanations of complex explain why “the children of oil magnates tend biosocial phenomena. to become bankers, while the children of oil Lewontin also spoke up against biological workers tend to be in debt to banks”. racism. His landmark paper ‘The Apportion- Lewontin’s sometimes controversial ment of Human Diversity’ (in Evolutionary Biol- critiques of science, often from a Marxist ogy Vol. 6 (eds T. Dobzhansky et al.) Springer, ERNST MAYR LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES OF THE MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY, HARVARD UNIV. HARVARD ZOOLOGY, OF THE MUSEUM COMPARATIVE ARCHIVES AND LIBRARY MAYR ERNST perspective, inspired new thinking on the rela- 1972) found more variation within so-called tionship between science, politics and society. of Rochester, New York, and the University of ‘racial groups’ than between them, leading He was an outspoken critic of sociobiology and Chicago, Illinois, he spent the rest of his career him to argue that such distinctions had no adaptationism (the idea that all traits evolved at Harvard. genetic basis. When biological arguments for as adaptations of an organism to its environ- During his time at Rochester in the early race were again put forward in the context of ment). He despised the use of biology to justify 1960s, attempts to study genetic variation mental testing in the 1980s, he opposed them racist ideology, especially with regard to IQ in natural populations were approaching an on scientific and social grounds, notably in Not testing. His celebrated essay ‘The spandrels impasse. On a visit to the University of Chicago, in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm’, Lewontin met Jack Hubby, who was adapting Nature (1984), co-authored with Steven Rose written with his colleague Stephen Jay Gould the biochemical technique of electropho- and Leon Kamin, and reissued in 2017 during (Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B. 205, 581–598; 1979) skew- resis (which separates molecules by charge the administration of US President Donald ered, among other things, a “reliance upon and size) to study the fruit fly Drosophila. Trump. He continued to publish in this realm plausibility alone as a criterion for accepting They realized that detecting small differences for decades. speculative tales”. Lewontin has died aged 92. between proteins could provide a new means Lewontin described himself as a pessimis- Richard Lewontin was born into an upper- of measuring genetic variability. tic biologist. He was a profoundly critical middle-class Jewish family in New York City, Lewontin moved to the University of thinker, willing to challenge the scientific and and originally studied biology at Harvard Chicago and, with Hubby, published two philosophical foundations of his discipline as University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the landmark papers (Genetics 54, 577–594 and well as their social, cultural and political con- early 1950s. At the time, Harvard had no faculty 595–609; 1966), which opened the way for the sequences. His research and reflections set an member specializing in genetics, so Lewontin widespread application of electrophoresis agenda for generations of biologists, philoso- studied with a visitor, Leslie C. Dunn, from and marked the beginning of molecular pop- phers of biology and socially engaged scholars. Columbia University in New York City. Dunn ulation genetics. These papers also revealed In keeping with his socialism, he disliked persuaded Lewontin to join the Columbia higher than expected amounts of genetic var- biography and its celebration of the individual. laboratory of Theodosius Dobzhansky, then iability, addressing a long-standing dispute When, in 1997, I asked him how I should write the most influential evolutionary geneticist about whether natural selection maintains about his life, he pulled out of his desk a list of in the world. Lewontin adopted Dobzhansky’s genetic variability in natural populations. every graduate student, postdoc and visitor at investigation of the nature of selection and its In 1984, Martin Kreitman, working between his laboratory — more than 100 people — and impact on the variability of natural and lab- Lewontin’s and Walter Gilbert’s laboratories said I should write about all of them. They were oratory populations. He completed his PhD at Harvard, brought DNA sequencing to bear his greatest source of pride as a scientist. in 1954. on this question. That year, Lewontin joined the faculty at In Chicago in the 1960s, Lewontin became Michael R. Dietrich spent a sabbatical in North Carolina State University in Raleigh. increasingly politically active, speaking out Lewontin’s laboratory in 1997. He has co-edited Here, he focused primarily on mathematical against racial discrimination, the Vietnam War many books about iconoclastic biologists, population genetics and worked with Ken-Ichi and economic inequality. His fervent convic- and is a professor in the Department of History Kojima on genetic linkage, the tendency of tions led him to renounce his election to the and Philosophy of Science at the University of neighbouring genetic sequences to be inher- US National Academy of Sciences, because Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. ited together. After periods at the University of its support for secret war research. With e-mail: [email protected]. Nature | Vol 595 | 22 July 2021 | 489 ©2021 Spri nger Nature Li mited. All rights reserved. .
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