Richard Lewontin obituary

The American scientist Richard Lewontin, who has died aged 92, was intimately involved in some of the most important discoveries, and feuds, of evolutionary biology during the decades in which it passed from knowing that genes existed to specifying them in precise molecular terms.

His greatest contribution came in the 1960s, when he demonstrated the existence of very widespread genetic variation within species as well as between them. This research, with John Hubby at the University of Chicago, which had started with grinding up fruit flies, was extended to human beings in a paper published in 1972 that revealed the emptiness of traditional biological concepts of race.