- Joseph Felsenstein
Joseph "Joe" Felsenstein is Professor in the Departments of Genome Sciences and
Biology and Adjunct Professor in the Departments ofComputer Science andStatistics at theUniversity of Washington inSeattle . 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 calledPHYLIP . Closely related to his work on phylogenetic inference is his introduction of methods for making statistically independent comparisons using phylogenies (Felsenstein, 1985).Felsenstein did his undergraduate work at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison where he did undergraduate research underJames F. Crow [ [http://www.genetics.wisc.edu/faculty/profile.php?id=102 James F. Crow ] ] . He then did doctoral work underRichard Lewontin in the 1960s, when he was at theUniversity of Chicago http://protist.biology.washington.edu/bio2/people/bio.html?parecID=106] , and did apostdoc at the Institute of Animal Genetics inEdinburgh prior to becoming faculty at theUniversity of Washington .In addition to his work in phylogenetics, he is also noted for his work in theoretical population genetics, including studies on selection, migration, linkage, speciation, and the coalescent.
He was one of thirteen recipients of the Darwin-Wallace Award in 2008; this award is given every 50 years by the
Linnean Society of London .Publications
Books
*Felsenstein, J., and B. Taylor, eds. 1973. "A Bibliography of Theoretical Population Genetics". U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Technical Information Center, Oak Ridge, Tenn.
*Felsenstein, J. 2004. "Inferring Phylogenies". Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, Mass.
*Felsenstein, J. 2005. [http://evolution.genetics.washington.edu/pgbook/pgbook.html "Theoretical Evolutionary Genetics" (free ebook)]elected papers
*Felsenstein, J. 1973. Maximum likelihood and minimum-steps methods for estimating evolutionary trees from data on discrete characters. "Systematic Zoology" 22:240-249.
*Felsenstein, J. 1982. Numerical methods for inferring evolutionary trees. "Quarterly Review of Biology" 57:379-404.
*Felsenstein, J. 1985. Phylogenies and the comparative method. "American Naturalist" 125:1-15.
*Felsenstein, J. 1988. Phylogenies from molecular sequences: inference and reliability. "Annual Review of Genetics" 22:521-565.Trivia
He is the older brother of early personal computer designer
Lee Felsenstein [http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/pc.htm Early History of the Personal Computer ] ] . He was aRed Diaper Baby (child ofCPUSA members) and was named afterJoseph Stalin .References
See also
*
Phylogenetic comparative methods
*Phylogenetics
*Systematics
*Felsenstein's Tree Peeling Algorithm External links
* [http://www.gs.washington.edu/faculty/felsenstein.htm Website]
* [http://workshop.molecularevolution.org/people/faculty/felsenstein_joseph.php Talks given]
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