- Wen-Hsiung Li
Wen-Hsiung Li (1942-) is a
Taiwanese American scientist working in the fields ofmolecular evolution ,population genetics , andgenomics . He is currently the James Watson Professor of Ecology and Evolution at theUniversity of Chicago and a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Information Science and Genomics Research Center,Academia Sinica ,Taiwan .Biography
Li was born 1942 in Taiwan. In 1968 he received a M.S. in geophysics from
National Taiwan University . In 1972 he received his Ph.D in applied mathematics/genetics at theBrown University inProvidence ,Rhode Island . From 1972 to 1973 he was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin Madison (genetics), working withJames F. Crow . In 1973 he moved to theUniversity of Texas , where he was appointed as a professor in 1984. Since 1998 he has been a Professor atThe University of Chicago .cientific contributions
He is best known for his studies on the
molecular clock ("i.e." rates and patterns ofDNA sequence evolution) and on the patterns and consequences ofgene duplication .In 2003, he received the internationalBalzan Prize for his contribution togenetics andevolutionary biology , and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, who cited his role in "establishing theoretical foundations for molecular phylogenetics and evolutionary genomics" [http://www.nasonline.org/site/Dir/784251124?pg=vprof&mbr=1003931&returl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nasonline.org%2Fsite%2FDir%2F784251124%3Fpg%3Dsrch%26view%3Dbasic&retmk=search_again_link] . He is author of first texts in the field ofmolecular evolution , "Molecular Evolution" and "Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution" (co-authored withDan Graur ), and an author on more than 200 peer-reviewed publications.Honors
* Academia Sinica Taiwan, 1998
* American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999
* President of the “Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution”, 2000
* National Academy of Sciences, 2003
*Balzan prize 2003 for genetics and evolution (The third recipient, followingSewall Wright (1984) andJohn Maynard Smith (1991)).References
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External links
* [http://pondside.uchicago.edu/ecol-evol/faculty/li_w.html Official research profile]
* [http://pondside.uchicago.edu/~lilab/ Lab web site]
* [http://www.nasonline.org/site/Dir/784251124?pg=vprof&mbr=1003931&returl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nasonline.org%2Fsite%2FDir%2F784251124%3Fpg%3Dsrch%26view%3Dbasic&retmk=search_again_link National Academy of Sciences citation]
* [http://www.balzan.com/en/preistraeger/li.cfm Balzan Foundation profile]
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