Professor
George Christopher Williams (May 12, 1926 – September 8, 2010) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
evolutionary biologist.
Williams was a professor emeritus of
biologyBiology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
at the
State University of New York at Stony BrookThe State University of New York at Stony Brook, also known as Stony Brook University, is a public research university located in Stony Brook, New York, on the North Shore of Long Island, about east of Manhattan....
. He was best known for his vigorous critique of
group selectionIn evolutionary biology, group selection refers to the idea that alleles can become fixed or spread in a population because of the benefits they bestow on groups, regardless of the alleles' effect on the fitness of individuals within that group....
. The work of Williams in this area, along with
W. D. HamiltonWilliam Donald Hamilton FRS was a British evolutionary biologist, widely recognised as one of the greatest evolutionary theorists of the 20th century....
,
John Maynard SmithJohn Maynard Smith,His surname was Maynard Smith, not Smith, nor was it hyphenated. F.R.S. was a British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J.B.S....
and others led to the development of a gene-centric view of evolution in the 1960s.
Academic Work
Williams' 1957 paper
Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence is one of the most influential in 20th century evolutionary biology, and contains at least 3 foundational ideas. The central hypothesis of antagonistic pleiotropy remains the prevailing evolutionary explanation of senescence. In this paper Williams was also the first to propose that
senescenceSenescence or biological aging is the change in the biology of an organism as it ages after its maturity. Such changes range from those affecting its cells and their function to those affecting the whole organism...
should be generally synchronized by
natural selectionNatural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
. According to this original formulation
"if the adverse genic effects appeared earlier in one system than any other, they would be removed by selection from that system more readily than from any other. In other words, natural selection will always be in greatest opposition to the decline of the most senescence-prone system."
This important concept of synchrony of senescence was taken up a short time later by
John Maynard SmithJohn Maynard Smith,His surname was Maynard Smith, not Smith, nor was it hyphenated. F.R.S. was a British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J.B.S....
, and the origin of the idea is often misattributed to him, including in his obituary in the journal, Nature. This paper also contains the first basic outline of the so-called "
grandmother hypothesisThe grandmother hypothesis is a theory to explain why menopause, rare in mammal species, arose in human evolution and how a long post-fertile period could confer an evolutionary advantage....
", which states that natural selection might select for menopause and post-reproductive life in females, although Williams does not explicitly mention grandchildren or the
inclusive fitnessIn evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, the inclusive fitness of an organism is the sum of its classical fitness and the number of equivalents of its own offspring it can add to the population by supporting others...
contribution of grandparenting.
In his first book,
Adaptation and Natural SelectionAdaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought is a 1966 book by the American evolutionary biologist George C. Williams...
, Williams advocated a "ground rule - or perhaps
doctrine would be a better term - ... that
adaptationAn adaptation in biology is a trait with a current functional role in the life history of an organism that is maintained and evolved by means of natural selection. An adaptation refers to both the current state of being adapted and to the dynamic evolutionary process that leads to the adaptation....
is a special and onerous concept that should only be used where it is really necessary", and, that, when it is necessary,
selectionIn the context of evolution, certain traits or alleles of genes segregating within a population may be subject to selection. Under selection, individuals with advantageous or "adaptive" traits tend to be more successful than their peers reproductively—meaning they contribute more offspring to the...
among
genesGênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy, named after the city of Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa, and it was divided in the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...
or individuals would in general be the preferable explanation for it. He elaborated this view in later books and papers, which contributed to the development of a gene-centered view of evolution;
Richard DawkinsClinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
built on Williams' ideas in this area in the book
The Selfish GeneThe Selfish Gene is a book on evolution by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976. It builds upon the principal theory of George C. Williams's first book Adaptation and Natural Selection. Dawkins coined the term "selfish gene" as a way of expressing the gene-centred view of evolution as opposed to the...
.
Williams was also well known for his work on the
evolution of sexThe evolution of sexual reproduction is currently described by several competing scientific hypotheses. All sexually reproducing organisms derive from a common ancestor which was a single celled eukaryotic species. Many protists reproduce sexually, as do the multicellular plants, animals, and fungi...
, and was an advocate of
evolutionary medicineEvolutionary medicine or Darwinian medicine is the application of modern evolutionary theory to understanding health and disease. It provides a complementary scientific approach to the present mechanistic explanations that dominate medical science, and particularly modern medical education...
.
Academic career
Williams received a
Ph.D.Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in biology from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1955. At Stony Brook he taught courses in
marineMarine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather...
vertebrateVertebrates are animals that are members of the subphylum Vertebrata . Vertebrates are the largest group of chordates, with currently about 58,000 species described. Vertebrates include the jawless fishes, bony fishes, sharks and rays, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and birds...
zoologyZoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
, and he often uses ichthyological examples in his books.
In 1992 Williams was awarded the
Daniel Giraud Elliot MedalThe Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for meritorious work in zoology or paleontology published in a three- to five-year period." Named after Daniel Giraud Elliot, it was first awarded in 1917....
from the
National Academy of SciencesThe National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...
. He won the
Crafoord PrizeThe Crafoord Prize is an annual science prize established in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish industrialist, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord...
for Bioscience jointly with
Ernst MayrErnst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...
and
John Maynard SmithJohn Maynard Smith,His surname was Maynard Smith, not Smith, nor was it hyphenated. F.R.S. was a British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J.B.S....
in 1999. Dawkins describes Williams as "one of the most respected of American evolutionary biologists".
Books
- Williams, G.C. 1966. Adaptation and Natural Selection
Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought is a 1966 book by the American evolutionary biologist George C. Williams...
. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
- Williams, G.C., ed. 1971. Group Selection
Group Selection is a 1971 book edited by George C. Williams, containing papers written by biologists arguing against the view of group selection as a major force in evolution...
. Aldine-Atherton, Chicago.
- Williams, G.C. 1975. Sex and Evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
- Paradis, J. and G.C. Williams. 1989. T.H. Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics : with New Essays on its Victorian and Sociobiological Context. Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
- Williams, G.C. 1992. Natural Selection: Domains, Levels, and Challenges. Oxford University Press, New York.
- Nesse, R.M. and G.C. Williams. 1994. Why We Get Sick : the New Science of Darwinian Medicine. Times Books, New York.
- Williams, G.C. 1996. Plan and Purpose in Nature. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London (published in the U.S. in 1997 as The Pony Fish’s Glow : and Other Clues to Plan and Purpose in Nature. Basic Books, New York).
Selected papers
- Williams, G. C. 1957. Pleiotropy, Natural Selection, and the Evolution of Senescence. Evolution 11;4: 398-411
- Taylor, P. O. and G. C. Williams. 1984. Demographic parameters at evolutionary equilibrium. Canadian Journal of Zoology 62: 2264-2271.
- Williams, G. C. 1985. A defense of reductionism in evolutionary biology. Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology 2: 127.
- Williams, G. C. 1988. Huxley's Evolution and Ethics in sociobiological perspective. Zygon 23: 383-438.
- Williams, G. C. 1995. A package of information In J. Brockman, ed., The Third Culture
The Third Culture is a book by John Brockman which discusses the work of several well-known scientists who are directly communicating their new, sometimes provocative, ideas to the general public...
, New York: Touchstone, pp. 38–50.
External links