Education
Blind from the age of three, he graduated from Princeton University in 1968 and received his Doctor of Philosophy in biology and geology from Yale University in 1971.
malacologist paleontologist Zoologist
Blind from the age of three, he graduated from Princeton University in 1968 and received his Doctor of Philosophy in biology and geology from Yale University in 1971.
An evolutionary biologist and paleontologist, he studies marine molluscs both as fossils and as living creatures. He started writing about his Escalation hypothesis in the 1980s. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992.
His books include Evolution and Escalation: An Ecological History of Life, A Natural History of Shells, Privileged Hands, Nature: An Economic History, and The Evolutionary World: How Adaptation Explains Everything from Seashells to Civilization ().