Biographies : M

M.

Malthus, Thomas: (1766-1834) English political economist and demographer concerned about the poverty he saw in London. His Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) observes that as as populations increase at a geometric rate, but food production only arithmetically, people will always outrun the food supply . Poverty, disease, war, and famine were all outcomes of increasing population that kept populations from increasing. His theory was in opposition to the utopians of the 18th century. Malthus' insights were incorporated by Darwin who combined his idea with variation and natural selection: since more young are born than grow to adulthood, it follows that only those best fitted would be survive, and hence give rise to new offspring (natural slection). (adapted from PBS evolution Glossary)

Mantell, Gideon Algernon (1790-1852) English obstetrician, geologist and palaeontologist. in 1822 he was responsible for the discovery (and the eventual identification) of the first fossil teeth, and later much of the skeleton, of Iguanodon, which began the scientific study of dinosaurs. Wikipedia

Margulis, Lynn: A biologist who developed the serial endosymbiosis theory of origin of the eukaryotic cell. Although now accepted as a plausible theory, both she and her theory were ridiculed by mainstream biologists for a number of years. (PBS evolution Glossary)

Marsh, Othniel C.: (1831-1899), of Yale University, was perhaps the single most influential American vertebrate paleontologist of the 19th Century. His credentials were sterling, and his accomplishments, astounding both in their volume and import. Marsh came from humble beginnings, born on a farm in Lockport, New York in 1831. Marsh was intelligent, and productive as a scientist, though in both of these regards it is questionable if he was a match for the truly gifted E.D. Cope of Philadelphia, with whom Marsh would have a life-long rivalry. Marsh, unlike Cope, was a superb politician, and equipped with a great deal of social acumen, such that he was far more skilled at gaining goverment grants from the USGS, and his list of administrative posts throughout his career further underscores these points: president of the NAS from 1883-1895, Vertebrate Paleontologist of the USGS from 1882-1892, and honoray Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology of the Smithsonian, a title granted in 1886. Some of Marsh's most noteworthy scientific accomplishments include naming and describing Triceratops, the quintessential dinosaur with which all children are fascinated, naming Ceratopsia, describing Theropoda, and recovering and describing the marvelous remains of Hesperornis regalis and Ichthyornis dispar from the Late Cretaceous Niobrara chalk beds of Kansas (published in a gorgeous monograph in 1880). Marsh was also an early defender of the theropod origin of birds (see Marsh 1877), and had a penchant for Mesozoic mammals. He is still rightly regarded as something of a legend in vertebrate paleontology. (EvoWiki)

Maryanska, Teresa: one of the foremost Polish paleontologists, and moreover, one of the few women to rise to prominence in what is unfortunately, a still very male-dominated field. Maryanska is truly brilliant, and her work includes influential revisions of the phylogeny of Ceratopsia, with particular emphasis on the description and classification of the vast amount of protoceratopsid and psittacosaurid material to emerge from central Asia in the past half-century (and in particular, Mongolia). See esp. Maryanska & Osmolska (1975). (JGK - EvoWiki)

Mayr, Ernst Walter: (1904 – 2005) One of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist. 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. With George Simpson he was one of the authors of evolutionary systematics. 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. In many of his writings, Mayr rejected reductionism in evolutionary biology, arguing that evolutionary pressures act on the whole organism, not on single genes, and that genes can have different effects depending on the other genes present. He advocated a study of the whole genome rather than of isolated genes only. Mayr was quite critical of molecular evolutionary studies such as those of Carl Woese, as well as of replacing current taxonomy with cladistic classification. (Wikipedia)

Mendel, Gregor Johann : (1822-1884) Austrian monk whose study of the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants, led to insights into the mechanisms of heredity that are the foundation of genetics today. Mendel showed that the inheritance of these traits follows particular laws, which were later named after him. His work was ignored in his lifetime and only rediscovered in 1900. The independent rediscovery of these laws formed the foundation of the modern science of genetics.See Mendelian inheritance. (PBS evolution Glossary, Wikipedia)

Moore, Raymond C. (1892–1974) American paleontologist, co-author (with Lalicker and Fischer) of Invertebrate Fossils (1952) and founder and first editor of the multi-volume Treatise on invertebrate paleontology (1953-ongoing). He was also a talented artiost who illustrated the book Invertebrate Fossils (MAK)

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