G. Ledyard Stebbins

George Ledyard Stebbins Jr. (January 6, 1906 – January 19, 2000) was an American botanist and geneticist who is widely regarded as one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century.

In 1914, Edith contracted tuberculosis and the Stebbins moved to Santa Barbara, California to improve her health.

In California, Stebbins was enrolled at the Cate School in Carpinteria where he became influenced by Ralph Hoffmann, an American natural history instructor and amateur ornithologist and botanist.

After graduating from high school, he embarked on a major in political studies at Harvard.

By the third year of his undergraduate study, he had decided to major in botany.

Stebbins started graduate studies at Harvard in 1928, initially working on flowering plant taxonomy and biogeography—particularly that of the flora of New England—with Merritt Lyndon Fernald.

He completed his MA in 1929 in biological sciences and continued to work toward his Ph.D. He became interested in using chromosomes for taxonomic studies, a method that Fernald did not support.

Stebbins chose to concentrate his doctoral work on the cytology of plant reproductive processes in the genus Antennaria, with cytologist E. C. Jeffrey as his supervisor and Fernald on his supervisory panel.

During his Ph.D. candidature, Stebbins sought advice and supervision from geneticist Karl Sax.

Sax identified several errors in Stebbins's work and disapproved of his interpretation of results that, while in accordance with Jeffrey's views, were inconsistent with the work of contemporary geneticists.

Jeffrey and Sax argued over Stebbins's dissertation, and the thesis was revised numerous times to accommodate their differing views.

Stebbins received his Ph.D. in botany from Harvard University in 1931.

He went on to the University of California, Berkeley, where his work with E. B. Babcock on the genetic evolution of plant species, and his association with a group of evolutionary biologists known as the Bay Area Biosystematists, led him to develop a comprehensive synthesis of plant evolution incorporating genetics.

His most important publication was Variation and Evolution in Plants, which combined genetics and Darwin's theory of natural selection to describe plant speciation.

It is regarded as one of the main publications which formed the core of the modern synthesis and still provides the conceptual framework for research in plant evolutionary biology; according to Ernst Mayr, "Few later works dealing with the evolutionary systematics of plants have not been very deeply affected by Stebbins' work."

He also researched and wrote widely on the role of hybridization and polyploidy in speciation and plant evolution; his work in this area has had a lasting influence on research in the field.

Stebbins's Ph.D. was granted by Harvard in 1931.

In March that year, he married Margaret Chamberlin, with whom he had three children.

In 1932, he took a teaching position in biology at Colgate University.

While at Colgate, he continued his work in cytogenetics; in particular, he continued to study the genetics of Antennaria and began to study the behaviour of chromosomes in hybrid peonies bred by biologist Percy Saunders.

Saunders and Stebbins attended the 1932 International Congress of Genetics in Ithaca, New York.

Here, Stebbins's interest was captured by talks given by Thomas Hunt Morgan and Barbara McClintock, who spoke about chromosomal crossover.

Stebbins reproduced McClintock's crossover experiments in the peony, and published several papers on the cytogenetics of Paeonia, which established his reputation as a geneticist.

In 1935, Stebbins was offered a genetics research position at the University of California, Berkeley working with geneticist E. B. Babcock.

Babcock needed assistance with a large Rockefeller-funded project characterizing the genetics and evolutionary processes of plants from the genus Crepis and was interested in developing Crepis into a model plant, to enable genetic investigations similar to those possible in the model insect Drosophila melanogaster.

Like the genera that Stebbins had previously studied, Crepis commonly hybridized, displayed polyploidy (chromosome doubling), and could make seed without fertilization (a process known as apomixis).

The collaboration between Babcock and Stebbins produced numerous papers and two monographs.

The first monograph, published in 1937, resulted in splitting off the Asiatic Crepis species into the genus Youngia.

The second, published in 1938, was titled The American Species of Crepis: their interrelationships and distribution as affected by polyploidy and apomixis.

In The American Species of Crepis, Babcock and Stebbins described the concept of the polyploid complex, and its role in plant evolution.

Some genera, such as Crepis, have a complex of reproductive forms that center on sexually diploid populations that have also given rise to polyploid ones.

Babcock and Stebbins also observed that allopolyploid types formed from the hybridization of two different species always have a wider distribution than diploid or autotetraploid species, and proposed that polyploids formed through hybridization have a greater potential to exploit varied environments, because they inherit all traits from both parents.

They also showed that hybridization in the polyploid complex could provide a mechanism for genetic exchange between diploid species that were otherwise unable to breed.

Their observations offered insight into species formation and knowledge of how all these complex processes could provide information on the history of a genus.

From 1960, Stebbins was instrumental in the establishment of the Department of Genetics at the University of California, Davis, and was active in numerous organizations involved in the promotion of evolution, and of science in general.

He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, was awarded the National Medal of Science, and was involved in the development of evolution-based science programs for California high schools, as well as the conservation of rare plants in that state.

Stebbins was born in Lawrence, New York, the youngest of three children.

His parents were George Ledyard Stebbins, a wealthy real estate financier who developed Seal Harbor, Maine and helped to establish Acadia National Park, and Edith Alden Candler Stebbins; both parents were native New Yorkers and Episcopalians.

Stebbins was known throughout his life as Ledyard, to distinguish himself from his father.

The family encouraged their sons' interest in natural history during their periodic journeys to Seal Harbor.