Perspectives : anecdotal, historical and critical commentaries on genetics

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to give a personal perspective of the person of Gustave Malecot and a conceptual account of his contributions to the field of population genetics. Some essential biographical information is given, but more important are some insights he himself gave into his early career. I was privileged to have him share these insights with me over the past 5 years. There are also some mathematical formulations necessary to put his work into its conceptual as well as historical context. The structure is mostly chronological. At times this account borrows heavily from an important Perspectives article written by NAGYLAKI (1989), who presented many details of Malecot's mathematics, especially the diffusion approximation approaches and other key conceptual issues. Other important accounts of Malecot's work and life include a recent interview with BOCQUET-APPEL (1996) and a series of articles by GILLOIS (1996a,b,c, and unpublished manuscript).

Citation

Epperson, Bryan K. 1999. Perspectives : anecdotal, historical and critical commentaries on genetics. Genetics. 152: p. 477-484 (June 1999)