Richard Benedikt Goldschmidt (April 12 1878 — 24 April 1958) was a Jewish-German-American geneticist.

Goldschmidt advanced a model of macroevolution through macromutations that is popularly known as the "Hopeful Monster" hypothesis. It was not generally accepted by the scientific community, and was ridiculed by some.

At about the time that Stephen J. Gould proposed his theory of punctuated equilibrium, he predicted that Goldschmidt would be vindicated. Gould authored an article entitled, The Return of the Hopeful Monsters.

References

• curt Stern Perspect Biol Med. 1969 Winter;12(2):179-203 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=4887419&dopt=Abstract

External links

• http://www.stephenjaygould.org/people/richard_goldschmidt.html
• http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dietrich/goldschmidt.html