How wonderful is the living world ! The wide range of living types is amazing. The extraordinary habitats in which we find living organisms, be it cold mountains, deciduous forests, oceans, fresh water lakes, deserts or hot springs, leave us speechless. The beauty of a galloping horse, of the migrating birds, the valley of flowers or the attacking shark evokes awe and a deep sense of wonder. The ecological conflict and cooperation among members of a population and among populations of a community or even the molecular traffic inside a cell make us deeply reflect on – what indeed is life? This question has two implicit questions within it. The first is a technical one and seeks answer to what living is as opposed to the non-living, and the second is a philosophical one, and seeks answer to what the purpose of life is. As scientists, we shall not attempt answering the second question. We will try to reflect on – what is living?

Born on 5 July 1904, in Kempten, Germany, Ernst Mayr, the Harvard University evolutionary biologist who has been called ‘The Darwin of the \(20^{\text {th }}\) century’, was one of the 100 greatest scientists of all time. Mayr joined Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1953 and retired in 1975, assuming the title Alexander Agasstz Professor of Zoology Emerttus. Throughout his nearly 80-year career, his research spanned ornithology, taxonomy, zoogeography, evolution, systematics, and the history and philosophy of biology. He almost single-handedly made the origin of species diversity the central question of evolutionary biology that it is today. He also pioneered the currently accepted definition of a biological species. Mayr was awarded the three prizes widely regarded as the triple crown of biology: the Balzan Prize in 1983, the International Prize for Biology in 1994, and the Crafoord Prize in 1999. Mayr died at the age of 100 in the year 2004.

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