NEWS HEADLINES
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Iran's supreme leader absent as senior officials attend ayatollah's funeral
Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since the attack which killed his father at the onset of the US-Israel war with Iran. read more
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US marks 250th birthday with fireworks, flyovers and extreme weather
US President Donald Trump's speech included some of his political agenda but also honoured war veterans and American history. read more
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Evacuations in Guam as super typhoon Bavi approaches
The storm is forecast to bring winds in excess of 160mph and waves nearly 11m high when it makes landfall on Monday. read more
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Australia probes mystery space balls that washed up on beach
Officials are searching for the origins of six pieces of space debris discovered on Forrest Beach in Queensland. read more
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Chinese underground church figure Jin Mingri freed from prison
The Zion Church founder's release comes after a direct plea to Xi Jinping from Donald Trump. read more
ONTOGENY AND PHYLOGENY
STEPHEN JAY GOLD
BIOGRAPHY
Stephen Jay Gould was born and raised in the community of Bayside, a neighborhood of the northeastern section of Queens in New York City. His father Leonard was a court stenographer, and his mother Eleanor was an artist whose parents were Jewish immigrants living and working in the city’s Garment District.[6] When Gould was five years old his father took him to the Hall of Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History, where he first encountered Tyrannosaurus rex. “I had no idea there were such things—I was awestruck,” Gould once recalled.[7] It was in that moment that he decided to become a paleontologist.
Raised in a secular Jewish home, Gould did not formally practice religion and preferred to be called an agnostic. Biologist Jerry Coyne, who had Gould on his thesis committee, described him as a “diehard atheist if there ever was one.
