G. Ledyard Stebbins

G. Ledyard Stebbins

George Ledyard Stebbins Jr. was an American botanist and geneticist. He is widely regarded as one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. His most important publication was Variation and Evolution in Plants, which combined genetics and Darwin’s theory of natural selection to describe plant speciation.

About G. Ledyard Stebbins in brief

Summary G. Ledyard StebbinsGeorge Ledyard Stebbins Jr. was an American botanist and geneticist. He is widely regarded as one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century. His most important publication was Variation and Evolution in Plants, which combined genetics and Darwin’s theory of natural selection to describe plant speciation. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Department of Genetics at the University of California, Davis, and was active in numerous organizations involved in the promotion of evolution, and of science in general. His work on the role of hybridization and polyploidy in speciation and plant evolution has had a lasting influence on research in the field. In 1935 he was elected to the National Academy of Science, and in 1940 he was awarded the National Medal of Science. He died in Los Angeles, California, in 1991. He had a son and a daughter. He worked on the genetics of Antennaria peonies and Paeonia peony hybrids. He also worked with E. B. Babcock on the genetic evolution of plant species, and his association with a group of evolutionary biologists known as the Bay Area Biosystematists, led him to develop a comprehensive synthesis of plant evolution incorporating genetics. He published several papers on the cytogenetics of Ponyonia, which established his reputation as a geneticist, which he continued to work on until his death in 1992. He wrote about chromosomal crossover experiments in the peony peony, which led to the development of the hybrid peony.

His son and daughter were born in Lawrence, New York, and he later moved to Santa Barbara, California. His father was a wealthy real estate financier who developed Seal Harbor, Maine and helped to establish Acadia National Park, and Edith Alden Candler StebBins; both parents were native New Yorkers and Episcopalians. He went on to become a professor of biology at Colgate University in New York and later at Harvard University. He married Margaret Chamberlin, with whom he had three children, and died in California in 1991, aged 89. He left a legacy of research on plant genetics and cytogenetic research. He continued to study the genetics and study the behaviour of hybrid peonies in particular, and began to study and study hybrids in Percy Saunders Saunders. He later wrote a book on hybrid peons, which was published in 1983. He has also written a biography of Percy Saunders, which has been published by The New York Review of Books, and a book of his own, The Evolution of Hybrid Peonies, which is published by Simon & Schuster, Inc. (1998). He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Society of Plant Biologists, and served on the Board of Trustees of the National Museum of Natural History, among other positions. He lived in Santa Barbara until he died in 1992, when he moved to San Francisco. He and his wife died in a house fire in 1998.