dbd%benden@LANL.GOV (03/10/88)
From: dbd%benden@LANL.GOV (Dan Davison)
A pair of notes recently appeared on the Usenet sci.bio newsgroup that are
of interest to all interested in molecular evolution. I will let the notes
speak for themselves. A great loss.
dan davison
Subject: Sewall Wright
Date: 3 Mar 88 20:00:17 GMT
I have just received word that Sewall Wright is dead at age 99. He broke
his hip while walking and never recovered.
Sewall Wright was one of the greats in population genetics and evolution,
contributing in MANY areas. The debates between Wright and Fisher in the
1920's and 1930's helped to form a discipline.
--
Ted H. Emigh, Dept. Genetics and Statistics, NCSU, Raleigh, NC
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Subject: Re: Sewall Wright
Summary: In Memoriam
Keywords: evolution, genetics, Wright, Fisher
Date: 4 Mar 88 08:00:05 GMT
I am sorry to hear of Sewall Wright's death.
Sewall Wright was born on December 21, 1889 (which meant that he would
have been 98, not 99). Nobody really believed he would ever die.
He survived his great (unfriendly) adversary R. A. Fisher by 26 years
and the other great figure of theoretical population genetics,
J. B. S. Haldane (with whom he was not on unfriendly terms), by 24 years.
The definitive scientific biography of Wright, "Sewall Wright and
Evolutionary Biology" by William H. Provine, was published recently.
It is a brilliant and well-written book that every student of evolution
should read. There is too much to say about Wright, who invented
inbreeding coefficients, effective population size, path coefficients,
and made many, many other contributions to evolutionary theory.
For those interested in molecular biology, I should also point out that
Wright worked for many years on "physiological genetics", working out
the interactions of coat color genes in guinea pigs. In 1917 he wrote
a number of papers in Journal of Heredity, examining coat color gene
interaction, and concluding that the interactions were best explained
if one assumed that what each gene did was control an enzyme. This was
over twenty years before Beadle and Tatum's "one gene, one enzyme"
paper. In the interim Wright regularly reviewed "physiological genetics"
in a series of papers. Beadle and Tatum were well aware of Wright's
work and cited it in their paper.
Wright had trouble seeing and hearing in recent years, but was in remarkably
good health otherwise (a tribute to the efficacy of his habit of walking
vigorously every day) and I am told that he currently had a paper in press
(replying to some points raised by Will Provine in the biography). He
was sometimes difficult to communicate with, but that was always true!
We will all miss Sewall. I suspect that in the next few weeks we will
see quite a few obituaries. There should be a Sewall Wright centennial
celebration in Madison in late 1989. It is a pity that he won't be there
to deliver the keynote speech as we had all hoped.
-----
Joe Felsenstein, Dept. of Genetics SK-50, Univ. of Washington, Seattle WA 98195
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