John Maynard Smith
2004; Oxford University Press; Volume: 168; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/genetics/168.3.1105
ISSN1943-2631
Autores Tópico(s)Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
ResumoJOHN Maynard Smith was one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of the generation that succeeded the “founding fathers” of population genetics, as he was fond of calling Fisher, Wright, and Haldane. Maynard Smith's father was a London surgeon, but died when John was 8 years old. His mother came from a well-to-do Edinburgh family. His childhood holidays were spent with his grandparents in rural Somerset, where, without any encouragement from adults, he developed a strong interest in natural history (Maynard Smith 1985). Stag hunting was a major occupation of the local inhabitants, and John alleged that the start of each hunting season was celebrated by the local church with the anthem “As pants the hart for cooling stream/while heated in the chase/so longs my heart for Thee, O Lord/and Thy redeeming Grace.” At 13, he entered Eton College, the best-known public (i.e., private) school in England. He detested this bastion of the English ruling classes, although he admitted that the mathematics teaching was very good (Maynard Smith 1985). He then studied engineering at the University of Cambridge, where he was one of the first undergraduates to get married. His wife, Sheila, is a mathematician, who later worked on human genetics and then on bacterial genetics until her retirement from the University of Sussex.
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