Godfrey Hewitt
Godfrey Matthew Hewitt (born January 10, 1940 in Worcester , † February 18, 2013 in Cambridge ) was a British evolutionary biologist and geneticist.
Hewitt studied at the University of Birmingham , where he received his doctorate in cytogenetics, and in 1965/66 as a post-doctoral student at the University of California, Davis . From 1966 he was a lecturer at the newly founded University of East Anglia , where he received a full professorship in 1988. In 2005 he retired.
He is considered the founder of the discipline of molecular ecology and dealt, among other things, with hybrid zones (with his student Nick Barton , with whom he investigated hybrid zones of grasshoppers in southern Europe) and the survival strategies of species in Europe during the Ice Age (with corresponding mapping of the historical distribution areas) where he found that they withdrew to refuges, in which they withstood the climatic fluctuations and repopulated the continent when the climate changed. These refuges in southern countries (Italy, Spain, the Balkans) were characterized by genetic diversity, while the species in northern Europe were genetically more homogeneous. A related work by him from 1996 has been quoted many times. With regard to upcoming climatic fluctuations (although he also thought a new cold period was possible), he was concerned about the destruction of habitats that could serve as possible refuges by humans.
In 2013 he received the Darwin Wallace Medal and in 2005 the Molecular Ecology Prize. In 2008 he received an honorary doctorate from the Autonomous University of Madrid. He was visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing (2000), at the University of Rome La Sapienza, at the University of Hawaii, visiting scholar at the Australian National University and at the Gulbenkian Institute in Lisbon. From 1999 to 2001 he was President of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology.
He was married to Elizabeth Shattock since 1960 and had three sons.
Fonts (selection)
- with Nick Barton: Adaptation, Speciation and Hybrid Zones, Nature, Volume 341, 1989, pp. 497-503
- Some genetic consequences of ice ages, and their role in divergence and speciation, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 58, 1996, pp. 247-276.
- Post-glacial re-colonization of European biota, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 68, 1999, pp. 87-11.
- The genetic legacy of the Quaternary ice ages, Nature, Volume 405, 2000, pp. 907-913.
- Genetic consequences of climatic oscillations in the Quaternary, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Volume 359, 2004, p. 183
- with Richard A. Nichols: Genetic and Evolutionary Impacts of Climate Change, in: Thomas Lovejoy, Lee Hannah (Eds.), Climate Change and Biodiversity, Yale UP, 2005
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hewitt, Godfrey |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hewitt, Godfrey Matthew (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British evolutionary biologist and geneticist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 10, 1940 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Worcester |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 18, 2013 |
| Place of death | Cambridge |