Alan Grafen

Last updated

Alan Grafen
Born
NationalityScottish
CitizenshipUnited Kingdom
Scientific career
Fields Ethology, Evolutionary biology
Institutions University of Oxford
Thesis The economics of evolutionary stability  (1984)
Doctoral advisor Richard Dawkins
Doctoral students
Website users.ox.ac.uk/~grafen/

Alan Grafen FRS is a Scottish ethologist and evolutionary biologist. He currently teaches and undertakes research at St John's College, Oxford. [1] Along with regular contributions to scientific journals, Grafen is known publicly for his work as co-editor (with Mark Ridley) of the 2006 festschrift Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think , [2] honouring the achievements of his colleague and former academic advisor. He has worked extensively in the field of biological game theory, and, in 1990, devised a model showing that Zahavi's well-known handicap principle could theoretically exist in natural populations. [3] [4]

He also published a seminal paper in the field of phylogenetic comparative methods, in which he demonstrated how the tools of generalized least squares could be applied to perform phylogenetically informed statistical analyses. [5]

Grafen was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2011. [6]

Bibliography

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References

  1. http://users.ox.ac.uk/~grafen/ Alan Grafen's Web Page at Oxford University
  2. Ridley, Mark; Grafen, Alan (2006). Richard Dawkins: how a scientist changed the way we think: reflections by scientists, writers, and philosophers . Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. ISBN   0-19-929116-0.
  3. Grafen, A. (1990). "Biological signals as handicaps". Journal of Theoretical Biology. 144 (4): 517–546. Bibcode:1990JThBi.144..517G. doi:10.1016/S0022-5193(05)80088-8. PMID   2402153.
  4. Grafen, Alan (1 June 1990). "Sexual selection unhandicapped by the Fisher process". Journal of Theoretical Biology. 144 (4): 473–516. Bibcode:1990JThBi.144..473G. doi:10.1016/s0022-5193(05)80087-6. PMID   2402152.
  5. Grafen, A. 1989. The phylogenetic regression. Phil. Trans. Royal. Soc. Lond. B 326:119-157.
  6. "Professor Alan Grafen FRS". Royal Society. Retrieved 18 March 2012.