Famous Evolutionary Biologists

Clinton Richard Dawkins, born March 26, 1941, is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and author. He became an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford. Dawkins served as the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 to 2008. Dawkins gained attention with his 1976 book, *The Selfish Gene*. This book popularized the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. With *The Extended Phenotype* (1982), he presented the idea that a gene's phenotypic effects do not always stay inside an organism.

Charles Robert Darwin (February 12, 1809 – April 19, 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist. He made major contributions to the science of evolution. His idea that all life species descend from common ancestors is now accepted science. In a joint paper with Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin proposed his theory of natural selection. This process shows that the struggle for existence affects evolution like artificial selection.

Stephen Jay Gould (September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. Gould wrote popular science books that many read. He taught at Harvard University and worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York for most of his career. In 1996, New York University hired Gould as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology. Gould's main impact on evolutionary biology came from his work.

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (November 5, 1892 – December 1, 1964) was a British-Indian scientist. He studied physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. Haldane made new contributions to statistics and biostatistics. His 1929 article on abiogenesis introduced the "primordial soup theory." This theory became the basis for physical models of life's chemical origin. Haldane established human gene maps for haemophilia and colour blindness on the X chromosome. He also wrote Haldane's rule on sterility in the heterogametic sex.

Jared Mason Diamond, born September 10, 1937, is an American geographer, anthropologist, historian, and author. He is known for popular science books like *The Third Chimpanzee* (1991), *Guns, Germs, and Steel* (1997, Pulitzer Prize winner), *Collapse* (2005), and *The World Until Yesterday* (2012). Diamond studied physiology but used anthropology, ecology, geography, and evolutionary biology. He teaches geography at UCLA. In 2005, Prospect and Foreign Policy ranked Diamond ninth among the world's top 100 public intellectuals.

Stuart Alan Kauffman, born September 28, 1939, is an American medical doctor, theoretical biologist, and complex systems researcher. He studies the origin of life on Earth. Kauffman taught at the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Calgary. He holds emeritus professor of biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and affiliate faculty at the Institute for Systems Biology. He earned awards including a MacArthur Fellowship and a Wiener Medal. Kauffman argues that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might cause

Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky (Ukrainian: Теодо́сій Григо́рович Добжа́нський; Russian: Феодо́сий Григо́рьевич Добржа́нский; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a leading Ukrainian-American geneticist and evolutionary biologist. His work shaped the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology. Dobzhansky was born in Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire, and moved to the United States in 1927 at age 27. His 1937 work, Genetics and the Origin of Species, heavily influenced the modern synthesis and received the US National

Alfred Russel Wallace (January 8, 1823 – November 7, 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. Wallace independently developed the theory of evolution through natural selection. He co-published his paper on this subject with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858. This action pushed Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species. Wallace conducted fieldwork in the Amazon River basin and later in the Malay Archipelago, identifying the faunal divide now called the Wallace Line, which separates

Nancy A. Moran, born December 21, 1954, in Dallas, Texas, is an American evolutionary biologist and entomologist. She is a University of Texas Leslie Surginer Endowed Professor and co-founder of the Yale Microbial Diversity Institute. She joined the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2005. Her main research focused on the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum, and its bacterial symbionts, including Buchnera (bacterium). In 2013, she returned to the University of Texas at Austin to continue studying bacterial symbionts in aphids, bees, and other insect species

Eric L. Charnov, born October 29, 1947, is an American evolutionary ecologist. He gained recognition for his work on foraging, specifically the marginal value theorem, and life history theory, focusing on sex allocation and scaling/allometric rules. Charnov is a MacArthur Fellow and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Three of his papers appear in Science Citation Classics. Charnov earned his B.S. from the University of Michigan in 1969 and his PhD in evolutionary ecology from the University of Washington in 1973. He serves as a Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) of Biology at the University of New M

Marc D. Hauser, born October 25, 1959, is an American evolutionary biologist. He researched primate behavior, animal cognition, and human behavior. Hauser faced guilt for fabricating and falsifying data. Hauser was a Harvard University professor from 1998 to 2011. He resigned after the university found him guilty of research misconduct. Harvard found Hauser guilty of scientific misconduct in 2010. He resigned a year later. The Office of Research Integrity of the Health and Human Services Department investigated because his research used government grants. The office found Hauser guilty in 2012.

Richard Charles "Dick" Lewontin, born March 29, 1929, is an American evolutionary biologist, mathematician, geneticist, and social commentator. Lewontin led the development of the mathematical basis for population genetics and evolutionary theory. He pioneered using molecular biology techniques, like gel electrophoresis, for genetic variation and evolution questions. Lewontin co-authored two key 1966 papers with J.L. Hubby in the journal Genetics. These papers set the path for modern molecular evolution. In 1979, Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould introduced the term "sp".

Geerat J. Vermeij, born September 28, 1946, in Sappemeer, is a Dutch-born geology professor at the University of California at Davis. He became blind at age three. Vermeij graduated from Princeton University in 1968. He earned his Ph.D. in biology and geology from Yale University in 1971. An evolutionary biologist and paleontologist, he studies marine molluscs, both as fossils and living creatures. Vermeij began writing about his Escalation hypothesis in the 1980s. He won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992. The National Academy of Sciences awarded Vermeij the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal in 2000.

Michael T. Ghiselin, born May 13, 1939, is an American biologist, philosopher, and historian of biology. He worked at the California Academy of Sciences. Ghiselin is known for his work on sea slugs. He also criticized the falsification of Lamarckism's history in biology textbooks.

Peter R. Grant is a 1985 Guggenheim Fellow in Natural Sciences.

Margaret J. "Margie" Profet, born August 7, 1958, is an American evolutionary biologist. She had no formal biology training. Profet created a decade-long controversy. This controversy stemmed from her findings on Darwinian evolution's role in menstruation, allergies, and morning sickness. She argued these three processes evolved to remove pathogens, carcinogens, and other toxins from the body.

Henry Edward Crampton, an American evolutionary biologist, studied land snails. Crampton conducted the first major study of evolution in nature during research in the Society Islands. He made twelve expeditions to Moorea near Tahiti to study the land snail genus Partula. He spent years measuring and cataloging his specimens. Crampton dedicated nearly fifty years to this study. He taught zoology at Columbia University and Barnard College from 1904 to 1943. He served as the curator of invert.

Leo W. Buss, born 1953, retired as a Professor at Yale University. He taught geology, geophysics, and ecology and evolutionary biology.

William T. Stanley manages collections at a major natural history museum. He studies eastern African mammals. Stanley is an evolutionary biologist and mammalogist. He directs the Field Museum of Natural History Collections Center. He manages the “FMNH Collection of Mammals”. Stanley studies the biogeography, ecology, evolution, and systematics of shrews, bats, and rodents living on Tanzanian mountains and nearby nations.

Nicole King, born in 1970, is an American biologist. She is a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, studying molecular and cell biology and integrative biology. The MacArthur Fellowship awarded her in 2005. She has been an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) since 2013. King studies the evolution of multicellularity and choanoflagellates. Her work reconstructs how multicellular animals evolved from single-cell organisms.

Richard Eimer Lenski, born August 13, 1956, is an American evolutionary biologist. He is a MacArthur "genius" fellow and a Hannah Distinguished Professor of Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University. Lenski is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Lenski is known for his ongoing 31-year E. coli evolution experiment. This experiment helped understand evolution's core processes: mutation rates, clonal interference, antibiotic resistance, the evolution of new traits, and speciation. He also pioneered work studying evolut