Marxist, activist, pioneering biologist
Devoted most of career to the study of genes
Richard Lewontin, who has died aged 92, was one of the most brilliant geneticists of his era; he was a pioneer of the study of evolution from a molecular perspective, dissolving the idea there are major genetic differences between “human races.”
Describing himself as an “auto mechanic of evolutionary biology,” Lewontin was a polymath who spoke fluent French, had a master’s in mathematical statistics, and was also a volunteer firefighter in the town of Marlboro, Vermont.
He was a Marxist, a political activist and a professor at Harvard University. Lewontin ran his lab like a commune and filled it with talented students, placing a premium on science as a collective endeavour.
Richard Lewontin was born on March 29, 1929, in New York, only child of Max and Lilian Lewontin. Inspired by a charismatic high school science teacher, he studied first at Harvard University, with a degree in Biology in 1952, then for a master’s and doctoral degree in Mathematics and Zoology at Columbia University.
He worked with fruit flies, in the tradition of his doctoral supervisor Theodosius Dobzhansky, a leading evolutionary geneticist.
While at the University of Rochester until 1964, he and his wife joined a sit-in at a police station to protest against police brutality against black people.
Until the 1960s biologists believed that most individuals in a population were similar, genetically speaking. That view would be challenged after Lewontin visited Jack Hubby at the University of Chicago, who was grinding up fruit flies and extracting their proteins, which he studied with gel electrophoresis, a technique that allows the separation and analysis of large molecules. Lewontin realized that the technique could help measure genetic variation.
In 1964 he became a professor in Chicago, where he was one of the first evolutionary biologists to use gel electrophoresis, working with Hubby.
Lewontin was inseparable from his wife, Mary Jane, his high school sweetheart and fellow activist. Three days before his death, she had died peacefully in her sleep with her husband of 73 years at her side.
Richard Lewontin is survived by his four sons.