Richard C. Lewontin, widely considered one of the most brilliant geneticists of the modern era and a prolific, elegant and often caustic writer who condemned the facile use of genetics and evolutionary biology to “explain” human nature, died on Sunday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 92.
Dr. Lewontin was a pioneer in the study of genetic variation among humans and other animals. Applying insights from mathematics and molecular biology, he radically advanced scientists’ understanding of the mechanisms of evolutionary change and overturned longstanding assumptions about differences among individuals, races and species.
A gleeful gadfly, he tirelessly attacked shibboleths about the primacy of DNA over nurture, culture and history in shaping complex behaviors.
Dr. Lewontin spent the bulk of his career at Harvard University. Many of his students and colleagues regarded him with an awe that tipped toward reverence, describing him as equally gifted at abstruse quantitative research, popular writing and public speaking; a Renaissance scholar who spoke fluent French, wrote treatises in Italian, worked with Buckminster Fuller on his geodesic domes and played chamber music on the clarinet with his pianist wife, Mary Jane. He was also a volunteer firefighter and a self-described Marxist who chopped his own wood.