Stephen Jay Gould - Biography

Biography

Stephen Jay Gould was born and raised in the community of Bayside, a quiet suburb located in the Queens borough of New York City. His father, Leonard, was a court stenographer, and his mother, Eleanor, was an artist. 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. 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. Though he "had been brought up by a Marxist father", he stated that his father's politics were "very different" from his own. In describing his own political views, he has said they "tend to the left of center". According to Gould the most influential political books he read were C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite and the political writings of Noam Chomsky.

While attending Antioch College in the early 1960s, Gould was active in the civil rights movement and often campaigned for social justice. When he attended the University of Leeds as a visiting undergraduate, he organized weekly demonstrations outside a Bradford dance hall which refused to admit Blacks. Gould continued these demonstrations until the policy was revoked. Throughout his career and writings, he spoke out against cultural oppression in all its forms, especially what he saw as the pseudoscience used in the service of racism and sexism.

Interspersed throughout his scientific essays for Natural History magazine, Gould frequently referred to his nonscientific interests and pastimes. As a boy he collected baseball cards and remained a New York Yankees fan throughout his life. As an adult he was fond of science fiction movies, but often lamented their mediocrity (not just in their presentation of science, but in their storytelling as well). His other interests included singing in the Boston Cecilia, and he was a great aficionado of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. He collected rare antiquarian books and textbooks. He often traveled to Europe, and spoke French, German, Russian, and Italian. He admired Renaissance architecture. When discussing the Judeo-Christian tradition, he usually referred to it simply as "Moses". He sometimes alluded ruefully to his tendency to put on weight.