Lawrence Schaeffer

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Lawrence Raymond Schaeffer (called "Larry") (born April 3, 1947 in Chicago , Illinois, USA) is a Canadian agronomist and animal breeder; he is Professor Emeritus of Animal Husbandry at the University of Guelph , Ontario, Canada.

Live and act

Larry Schaeffer was born in Chicago, USA and grew up in the state of Indiana . From 1965 he studied animal breeding science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and graduated with a "Bachelor of Science" from. In 1969 he moved to Cornell University in Ithaka, New York, where the leading scientists in quantitative genetics Henderson and Van Vleck taught, and in 1971 took the Master of Science exam. Already in 1973 the doctorate for PhD followed.

Schaeffer has now switched to the up-and-coming Canadian University of Guelph in Ontario. Here he set up the “Center for Genetic Improvement of Livestock” (CGIL, Center for Genetic Improvement of Livestock) and developed it into one of the leading institutions for research and teaching in the field of modern animal breeding. He retired on July 7, 2011.

Appreciation

Schaeffer is a particularly talented scientist, who was able to explain the most difficult facts to his students and thus enable them to apply them in their work. Since the mid-1970s, he has also qualified European animal breeders to understand new mathematical methods and solutions and to use them later in breeding value estimation. In the last years of his work he has encouraged animal breeders to include genomic information in their breeding value estimation. With its quick publication (2006), he wanted to prevent these ideas from being patented by individual interested parties or organizations and thus making their broad application more difficult (“patents in animal breeding”). Since Schaeffer was a very accomplished programmer, he gave many doctoral students, post-docs and visiting researchers direct assistance in evaluating their field data.

Focus of work

  • from 1975: new methodological developments in the area of ​​variance component estimation and breeding value estimation for farm animals.
  • 1975 - 1980s: Implementation of the BLUP methodology with the solution of large systems of equations, including all family relationships.
  • After 1990: Theoretical development and practical implementation in the evaluation of individual control data (test day data) using larger computer capacities.
  • 1994: Ensuring the international comparability of breeding values.
  • 1994 Presentation of the Multiple Across Country Evaluation Model, according to which the international breeding value assessment is carried out in Sweden.
  • 2006 Inclusion of genomic information in the form of single base polymorphisms (SNPs) in the breeding value estimation in all breeding organizations, if possible.
  • more than 170 articles in journals and some books, but 387 verified articles in the citation index

honors and awards

Publications (selection)

  • Effects of days dry and days open on lactation production of Holstein dairy Cornell. Cornell Univ. 1971.
  • Factors affecting the accuracy of variance component estimation. 1973.
  • Nonlinear techniques for predicting 305-day lactation production of Holsteins and Jerseys. In: Journal of Dairy Science, 60, 1977, 10, 1636-1644.
  • Strategy for applying genome-wide selection in dairy cattle. Jornal of Animal Brreding and Genetics, 123, 2006, 4, 218-223 (up to February 10, 2017 - cited 585 times).
  • History ef Genetic Evaluation Methods in Dairy Cattle, 2014, 334 pp.
  • Random regression models. 2016, 171 pp.

Web links

literature

  • Reinhard Reents and Ernst-Jürgen Lode : Hermann von Nathusius Medal for Prof. Dr. Lawrence Schaeffer. In: Züchtungskunde, 92, 2010, 1, 4–5

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Larry Schaeffer Emeritus University of Guelph
  2. ↑ Lawrence Schaeffer on the Züchtungskunde page of the German Society for Züchtungskunde pdf, accessed on February 11, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Schaeffer, Lawrence
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schaeffer, Lawrence Raymond (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian agronomist, animal breeder, and professor emeritus
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois, USA