Ernst Mayr, the very prominent Harvard evolutionary biologist, and author of numerous works on the subject is dead at age 100. Mayr was a key architect of the neo-Drawinian synthesis, the blending of Darwin's theory of natural selection with the science of genetics, and was instrumental in persuading biologists to accept the view that species evolved only when isolated from their parent populations. His influence among modern evolutionists is probably second only to that of Charles Darwin himself.