Lee Spetner

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Lee M. Spetner (Hebrew: לי ספטנר) was an American-Israeli scientist and writer who challenged the mainstream view of evolution. He believed that most evolution is nonrandom and that some rapid, small-scale changes can happen in living things in response to their environment. He wrote about these ideas in his books Not By Chance! Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution (1996) and The Evolution Revolution (2014).

Life and career
- Born January 17, 1927, in St. Louis, Missouri, and died August 9, 2024, in Jerusalem at age 97.
- Education: BS in mechanical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis (1945); PhD in physics from MIT (1950). His PhD advisers were Bruno Rossi and Robert Williams.
- Worked at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University (1951–1970), focusing on guided-missile systems.
- In 1970, he became technical director of Eljim, Ltd. (later part of Elbit) in Nes Tsiona, Israel, where he worked for about 20 years on military electronics, including countermeasures and navigation systems.
- He taught at Johns Hopkins University, Howard University, and the Weizmann Institute, teaching subjects such as classical mechanics, electromagnetism, probability, and statistics.

views on evolution
- Spetner began studying evolution in the 1960s and grew skeptical of the standard evolutionary theory.
- He argued that random mutations tend to reduce genetic information rather than create new, useful traits.
- He proposed a nonrandom evolutionary mechanism in which organisms have built-in abilities to respond to environmental stimuli, leading to rapid microevolution and possibly some macroevolution.
- Although he was a religious thinker and described by some as Jewish, his nonrandom evolution idea is presented as agnostic and does not claim that a supernatural creator is proven by evidence.
- He opposed teaching creation in public schools, preferring such topics to be discussed in family or religious settings.

Publications and legacy
- Not by Chance! Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution (1996) argued against the role of random mutations in evolution.
- The Evolution Revolution: Why Thinking People are Rethinking Evolution (2014) expanded on his nonrandom evolution hypothesis.
- He was sometimes cited as challenging aspects of the modern synthesis, including debates over Archaeopteryx and other evolution-related topics (a claim he discussed publicly in 1980).

Death
- Spetner passed away in Jerusalem on August 9, 2024, at the age of 97.