Joan Roughgarden

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Joan E. Roughgarden (born Jonathan Roughgarden on March 13, 1946 in Paterson , New Jersey ) is an American author , university professor and biologist .

Life and research

Roughgarden received a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1968 . In addition, Roughgarden obtained a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University . Roughgarden is the author of five books and over 120 articles.

Roughgarden has taught at Stanford University since 1972 . Roughgarden founded and directed the Earth Systems Program at Stanford and has been recognized for her commitment to the undergraduate programs. In her current research she tries to build a bridge between ecological and economic theories. At 52, Roughgarden came out as a transsexual woman. Jonathan Roughgarden took a semester off in 1998 and returned as Joan Roughgarden after gender reassignment measures (English: transition ). Teaching and research continued as before.

Based on an ecological textbook that she had written together with Paul R. Ehrlich , Roughgarden wrote the book Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender and Sexuality in Nature and People in 2004 . In this book, Roughgarden neither attacks the central statements of natural selection, nor is it an argumentation aid for the pseudoscientific statements of creationists . Rather, the work contains corrections to Darwin's remarks on the mechanism of selection . In the work, Roughgarden considers homosexuality as sexual behavior in many different animal species. When an article was published in the journal Science about her work , she received massive criticism from other scientists. 40 different experts criticized her massively in 10 letters, one of the critical scientists accused her of completely kitschy science and a lack of education . Roughgarden simply replied that she was n't too surprised at the criticism. In 2005 she received the Stonewall Book Award for this book .

In her next book Evolution and Christian Faith (2006) she dealt with the relationship between Christianity and science .

Roughgarden published the book The Genial Gene in 2009 . Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness. In it she tries to underpin her theses with mathematical models of cooperative game theory. The theory of sexual selection according to Darwin is based on a conflict situation between the partners: promiscuous males face reserved, weak females; many sperm compete to get to an egg cell. However, cooperation is an important driving force of evolution even in the early phase of the history of life, as the author wants to show empirically using the example of the Volvox algae.

Publications

  • Theory of Population Genetics and Evolutionary Ecology: An Introduction. Prentice Hall, 1979
  • with Paul R. Ehrlich : Science of Ecology. Prentice Hall, 1987
  • with Robert M. May & Simon A. Levin (Eds.): Perspectives in Ecological Theory. Oxford University Press, 1995
  • Anolis Lizards of the Caribbean: Ecology, Evolution and Plate Tectonics. Oxford University Press, 1995
  • Primer of Ecological Theory. Prentice Hall, 1997, ISBN 0134420624
  • Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. University of California Press, 2004, ISBN 0520246799
  • Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist. Iceland Press, 2006, ISBN 1597260983
  • The genial genes. Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness. The University of California Press, Berkeley 2009

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Virginia Gewin: " Joan Roughgarden profile: A plea for diversity " ( Memento October 18, 2004 in the Internet Archive ). In: Nature . 422, 2003, p. 368 f.
  2. ↑ Sexual selection alternative slammed. In: The Scientist. May 5, 2006
personal data
SURNAME Roughgarden, Joan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Roughgarden, Joan E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biologist and author
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Paterson , New Jersey