Robert R. Sokal

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Robert Reuven Sokal (born  January 13, 1926 in Vienna , †  April 9, 2012 in Stony Brook , New York ) was an Austrian - American ecologist , evolutionary biologist and biostatistician . He was a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1968 to 1995 and is considered to be a co-founder of numerical taxonomy . For his scientific achievements, he has been appointed a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences , among others .

Life

Robert Sokal was born in Vienna in 1926 in a middle - class family of Jewish origin as the only child of his parents. During the Nazi era , after the annexation of Austria, he and his family emigrated via Italy to Shanghai in 1939 , where he completed his schooling. At the local Saint John's University he completed a degree in biology , which he finished in 1947 with a bachelor's degree .

In the same year Robert Sokal moved to the University of Chicago , where he obtained his doctorate in zoology in 1952 under the supervision of the population geneticist Sewall Wright . He then went to the University of Kansas , where he initially acted as a lecturer in entomology and in 1961 received a professorship in statistical biology. In 1968 he became a professor in the newly created Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook , where he worked until 1995, including from 1980 to 1983 as head of the department.

After his retirement as SUNY Distinguished Professor emeritus, Robert Sokal continued to work in research and took part in events in his former department until shortly before his death. He was married and father of a son and daughter from 1948 until his death, and died in Stony Brook in 2012 . The time of his life in Shanghai, during which he met his wife of Chinese descent, is portrayed in the biographical work “Last Refuge Shanghai”, published in 2008.

Act

Robert Sokal was primarily concerned with the quantitative analysis of data in the biosciences, especially in the areas of ecology , evolutionary biology , population genetics and biological systematics . Together with Peter Sneath (1923–2011), he is considered to be the co-founder of numerical taxonomy , a classification system based on computer-aided calculation methods for cluster analysis . He supervised a total of 25 doctoral students at the University of Kansas and the State University of New York at Stony Brook .

In addition, Robert Sokal published over 200 scientific publications and 13 specialist books , six of which have been translated into other languages. Among his best known works is the collaboration with F. James Rohlf wrote and published in the previous four editions, as well as other new editions and translations since 1969 book "Biometry: The Principles and Practice of Statistics in Biological Research," which in the field of biostatistics is considered as a standard work.

Awards

Robert Sokal was made a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1983, and was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1986 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1987. He also received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1975 and 1983, and the Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in 2004 . The University of Crete awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1990 . At the State University of New York he was promoted to Leading Professor in 1972 and Distinguished Professor in 1991 . The American Society of Naturalists made him an honorary member.

Works (selection)

  • Principles of Numerical Taxonomy. San Francisco 1963 (as co-author)
  • Numerical Taxonomy: The Principles and Practice of Numerical Classification. San Francisco 1973 (as co-author)
  • Introduction to Biostatistics. New York 1973, 1987; Mineola 2009; Spanish edition: Barcelona 1980, 1999 (as co-author)
  • Biometry: The Principles and Practice of Statistics in Biological Research. San Francisco 1969, 1981; New York 1995, 2005, 2012; Spanish edition: Madrid 1979

literature

Further publications

  • Stefan Schomann: Last Refuge Shanghai: The Love Story of Robert Reuven Sokal and Julie Chenchu. Heyne-Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 3-45-315260-3

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Sokal, Robert R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sokal, Robert Reuven (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biologist and statistician
DATE OF BIRTH January 13, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 2012
Place of death Stony Brook