Leigh Van Valen, RIP: The man behind the Red Queen

In the New York Times, Douglas Martin has a fine obituary of one of the more intriguing figures in the history of evolutionary biology, Leigh Van Valen:

Be sure to read the rest. (One clarification worth making: the cells Van Valen thought should be named their own species were none other than HeLa cells, derived from Henrietta Lacks, the subject of Rebecca Skloot’s recent bestseller.)

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