Niles Eldredge

Areas of Specialization: Evolutionary Biology
Niles Eldredge is a biologist and paleontologist. He studied Latin and geology as an undergraduate before earning a PhD at Columbia University. His career and research have been devoted to the exploration of paleontology and evolutionary theory.

As curator of the American Museum of Natural History’s Department of Invertebrates, and later, Invertebrate Paleontology, he specialized in the study of the evolution of Phacopida trilobites, which went extinct roughly 245 million years ago.

A critic of the more common, gene-centered, view of evolution, he and collaborator Stephen Jay Gould have hypothesized that evolution occurs via multiple mechanisms, including environmental and ecological systems. Their theory, punctuated equilibrium, states that evolution occurs in shorter periods of accelerated change, separated by periods of stasis. His theoretical approach situates the evolutionary process within the historical and ecological context.

Eldredge is a prolific writer with more than 160 scientific works to his credit. His books include Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory, and Dominion, and more recently, Eternal Ephemera: Adaptation and the Origin of Species from the Nineteenth Century through Punctuated Equilibria and Beyond and Evolutionary Theory: A Hierarchical Perspective. In recent years, he has turned his attention to political activism, working to reject the rise of fascism.

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