Biography
Lewontin was born in New York City to parents descended from late 19th-century Eastern European Jewish immigrants. He attended Forest Hills High School and the École Libre des Hautes Études in New York. In 1951 he graduated from Harvard College (BS, biology). In 1952, Lewontin received a master's degree in mathematical statistics, followed by a doctorate in zoology in 1954, both from Columbia University, where he was a student of Theodosius Dobzhansky.
He held faculty positions at North Carolina State University, the University of Rochester, and the University of Chicago. In 1973 Lewontin was appointed as Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University, holding the position until 1998. As of 2003, he was the Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at Harvard. Lewontin has worked with and had great influence on many philosophers of biology, including William C. Wimsatt, Elliott Sober, Philip Kitcher, Elisabeth Lloyd, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Sahotra Sarkar, and Robert Brandon, often inviting them to work in his lab.
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