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Gustave Malécot (December 28 1911 — November 1998) was a French mathematician whose work on heredity had a strong influence on population genetics.

Biography


Malécot grew up in L'Horme, a small village near St. Étienne in the Loire département, the son of a mine engineer.

In 1935, Malécot a degree in mathematics from the École Normale Supérieure, Paris. He then went on to do a PhD under George Darmois and completed that in 1939. His work focused on R.A. Fisher's 1918 article The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance.

Between 1940 and 1942, with France under Nazi German occupation, Malécot taught mathematics at the Lyceé de Saint-Étienne. In 1942 he was appointed maître de conférence (lecturer) Université de Montpellier. In 1945 he joined the Université de Lyon, becoming professor of applied mathematics in 1946, a position he held until his retirement in 1981.

Malécot's Coancestry Coefficent, a measure of genetic similarity, still bears his name.

References


  • Epperson, Bryan K. (1999). Gustave Malécot, 1911–1998: Population Genetics Founding Father. Genetics 152, 477-484. link to article
  • Nagylaki, Thomas (1989). Gustave Malécot and the transition from classical to modern population genetics. Genetics 122, 253–268. link to article
  • Slatkin, Montgomery & Veuille, Michel (Eds.) (2002). Modern developments in theoretical population genetics: the legacy of Gustave Malécot. Oxford : Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-859963-3.

External links


population geneticists | French biologists | French mathematicians | Evolutionary biologists | 1911 births | 1998 deaths | Alumni of the École Normale Supérieure

Gustave Malécot | Gustave Malécot

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Gustave Malécot".

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