Jerry Coyne

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Jerry Coyne (b. 1949) is an American professor of biology, known for his commentary on the intelligent design debate. He is currently a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ecology and Evolution.

Coyne was valedictorian of his class (1971) at the College of William & Mary and received a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University, an NIH postdoc in genetics at UC Davis, and a 1989 Guggenheim fellowship. At Harvard, Coyne studied under Richard Lewontin, who sponsored his doctoral degree. He has served as Vice President of the Society for the Study of Evolution (1996) and as Associate Editor of Evolution (1985-1988; 1994-2000) and The American Naturalist (1990-1993). He currently teaches evolutionary biology, speciation, genetic analysis, social issues and scientific knowledge, and scientific speaking and writing.

His work is widely published, not only in scientific journals, but also in such mainstream venues as The New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and The New Republic. His research interests include population and evolutionary genetics, speciation, ecological and quantitative genetics, chromosome evolution, and sperm competition.

Coyne is a critic of intelligent design, or ID, noting it is "the latest pseudoscientific incarnation of religious creationism, cleverly crafted by a new group of enthusiasts to circumvent recent legal restrictions."^[1]

Professor Coyne is also an opponent of scientific racism, stating that the The Bell Curve was pseudoscientific in his review of Darwin's Black Box.^[2]