Bio-bibliography

USA

Sewall Wright

1984 Balzan Prize for Genetics

For his fundamental contribution to the understanding of the genetic phenomena on which evolution is based and for the formulation of mathematical models of the modification of gene frequencies in populations. For important achievements in the fields of physiological genetics and the improvement of animal breeding and plant cultivation.

Sewall Green Wright was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, on December 21, 1889 (†1988);
he is a U.S. citizen;
professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Chicago from 1926 to 1954; Professor Emeritus since 1954;
member of the Department of Generics at the University of Wisconsin from 1954 to 1960; Professor Emeritus since 1960;
member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (since 1934), the U.S. Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and foreign member of the Royal Society (England), the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters as well as honorary member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh;
Ph.D. « honoris causa » of the Universities of Chicago, Illinois, Wisconsin, Rochester, Yale, Case Western Reserve and Harvard, and of Michigan State College and Knox College.

In addition to more than 200 papers on evolutionary and population genetics, biometry, physiological genetics and statistics, Wright is the author of the following four-volume work:
— Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Vol. 1. Genetic and Biometric Foundations (1968);
— Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Vol. 2. The Theory of Gene Frequencies (1969);
— Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Vol. 3. Experimental Results and Evolutionary Deductions (1977);
— Evolution and the Genetics of Populations, Vol. 4. Variability within and among Natural Populations (1978).