Biography:Joseph Felsenstein

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Short description: American phylogeneticist
Joe Felsenstein
Felsenstein.jpg
Joe Felsenstein
Born
Joseph Felsenstein

(1942-05-09) May 9, 1942 (age 81)
Alma materUniversity of Chicago
Known forPHYLIP
Felsenstein's tree-pruning algorithm
AwardsSewall Wright Award (1993)
Weldon Memorial Prize (2000)
Darwin–Wallace Medal (2008)
John J. Carty award (2009)
International Prize for Biology (2013)
Scientific career
FieldsSystematics
Phylogenetics
Population genetics
Phylogenetic comparative methods
InstitutionsUniversity of Washington
ThesisStatistical Inference and the Estimation of Phylogenies (1968)
Doctoral advisorRichard Lewontin[1]
Notable studentsFred W. Allendorf
Websitewww.gs.washington.edu/faculty/felsenstein.htm
evolution.genetics.washington.edu/phylip/felsenstein.html

Joseph "Joe" Felsenstein (born May 9, 1942[2]) is a Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Genome Sciences and Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is best known for his work on phylogenetic inference, and is the author of Inferring Phylogenies, and principal author and distributor of the package of phylogenetic inference programs called PHYLIP. Closely related to his work on phylogenetic inference is his introduction of methods for making statistically independent comparisons using phylogenies.[3][4][5][6]

Education

Felsenstein did his undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he did undergraduate research under James F. Crow.[7] He then did doctoral work under Richard Lewontin in the 1960s, when he was at the University of Chicago,[8] and did a postdoc at the Institute of Animal Genetics in Edinburgh[8] prior to becoming faculty at the University of Washington.

Research

In addition to his work in phylogenetics,[9][10][11][12] [13] Felsenstein is also noted for his work in theoretical population genetics, including studies on selection, migration, linkage, speciation, and the coalescent.[14][15][16]

Awards

Felsenstein is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Darwin-Wallace Medal by the Linnean Society of London in 2008. In 2009 he was awarded the John J. Carty Award from the National Academy of Sciences.[17] In 2013 he was awarded the International Prize for Biology by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.[18]

The moth species Ufeus felsensteini was named in his honor.

Personal life

Felsenstein is the older brother of early personal computer designer Lee Felsenstein.[19]

An interview covering aspects of his academic career is part of the Distinguished Faculty Interview Series [20] of the Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington.

References

  1. Joseph Felsenstein at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. "International Prize for biology | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science". http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-biol/index.html. 
  3. Felsenstein, J. (1985). "Phylogenies and the Comparative Method". The American Naturalist 125: 1–2. doi:10.1086/284325. 
  4. Joseph Felsenstein's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (Subscription content?)
  5. Joseph Felsenstein publications indexed by Google Scholar
  6. List of publications from Microsoft Academic
  7. James F. Crow
  8. 8.0 8.1 "Archived copy". http://protist.biology.washington.edu/bio2/people/bio.html?parecID%3D106. 
  9. Felsenstein, J. (1973). "Maximum Likelihood and Minimum-Steps Methods for Estimating Evolutionary Trees from Data on Discrete Characters". Systematic Biology 22 (3): 240–249. doi:10.1093/sysbio/22.3.240. 
  10. Felsenstein, J. (1981). "Evolutionary trees from DNA sequences: A maximum likelihood approach". Journal of Molecular Evolution 17 (6): 368–376. doi:10.1007/BF01734359. PMID 7288891. Bibcode1981JMolE..17..368F. 
  11. Felsenstein, J. (1982). "Numerical Methods for Inferring Evolutionary Trees". The Quarterly Review of Biology 57 (4): 379–404. doi:10.1086/412935. 
  12. Felsenstein, Joe (1985). "Confidence limits on phylogenies: an approach using the bootstrap". Evolution 39 (4): 783–791. doi:10.2307/2408678. PMID 28561359. http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~nzhang/Stat366/Felsenstein85.pdf. 
  13. Felsenstein, J. (1988). "Phylogenies from Molecular Sequences: Inference and Reliability". Annual Review of Genetics 22: 521–565. doi:10.1146/annurev.ge.22.120188.002513. PMID 3071258. 
  14. Felsenstein, J., and B. Taylor, eds. 1973. A Bibliography of Theoretical Population Genetics. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Technical Information Center, Oak Ridge, Tenn.
  15. Felsenstein, J. 2004. Inferring Phylogenies. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Mass.
  16. Felsenstein, J. 2005. Theoretical Evolutionary Genetics (free ebook)
  17. "John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science". National Academy of Sciences. http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=AWARDS_carty. 
  18. "International Prize for biology | Japan Society for the Promotion of Science". http://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-biol/index.html. 
  19. Early History of the Personal Computer
  20. "UW Genome Sciences: Distinguished Faculty Interview Series". http://www.gs.washington.edu/news/interviews/index.htm.