Stephen Gould was born on September 10, 1941 in New York City. He received an A.B. in 1963 from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He then went to Graduate School in Evolutionary Biology and Paleontology at Columbia University. On October 3, 1965, he married Deborah Lee. In 1966, he became a Professor of Geology at Antioch College. The next year, he finished his doctoral work, earning a degree from Columbia. He also took an Assistant Professorship position at Harvard University. In 1971, he became an Associate Professor and in 1973, a Professor of Geology.
Gould was one of the founders of the Punctuated Equilibrium School of Evolution. His most famous argument for punctuated equilibrium is the panda's "thumb." This is a modification of the wrist bone that allows the panda to strip leaves from bamboo shoots which Gould argued must have occurred all at once or it would not have been preserved by natural selection. He is best known for his regular column, "This View of Life," (since 1974) in Natural History magazine.
Gould wrote a book entitled The Panda's Thumb for which he received two awards, the Notable Book Citation from the American Library Association in1980, and the American Book Award in Science in 1981.
Gould was also a popular writer and amateur historian of science. He believed the science of a particular era shares the assumptions and prejudices of that period. Gould argued against biological determinism. His book, The Mismeasure of Man, says that people cannot measure human intelligence objectively. The tests all have some sort of bias, whether it be social, class, racial or national. This book earned the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction in 1981 and the American Book Award Nomination in Science for 1982. In 1975, he received the Schubert Award from the Paleontological Society. Gould was a National Science Foundation grantee and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Naturalists, the Paleontological Society, the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Society of Systematic Zoology and Sigma Xi. He died after a prolonged bout with Cancer on May 20, 2002.