Stephen Jay GouldArticle Free Pass Gould graduated from Antioch
College in 1963 and received a Ph.D. in paleontology at Columbia
University in 1967. He joined the faculty of Harvard University
in 1967, becoming a full professor there in 1973. Gould’s own
technical research focused on the evolution and speciation of
West Indian land snails. With Niles Eldredge, he developed in
1972 the theory of punctuated equilibrium, a revision of
Darwinian theory proposing that the creation of new species
through evolutionary change occurs not at slow, constant rates
over millions of years but rather in rapid bursts over periods
as short as thousands of years, which are then followed by long
periods of stability during which organisms undergo little
further change. Gould’s theory was opposed by many, including
American biologist Edward O. Wilson, who believed that evolution
is essentially progressive, leading from the simple to the
complex and from the worse-adapted to the better. Gould also
argued that population genetics