George C. Williams

Professor George Christopher Williams (b. May 12, 1926) is an American evolutionary biologist.

Williams is a professor emeritus of biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is noted for starting the Williams revolution, presenting a gene-centric basis for biology with his 1966 book Adaptation and Natural Selection which was made even more explicit by Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene.

Williams received a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1955.

He won the Crafoord Prize for Bioscience jointly with Ernst Mayr and John Maynard Smith in 1999.

He is also an advocate of evolutionary medicine.

Bibliography

• Williams, G.C. 1992. Natural Selection: Domains, Levels, and Challenges. Oxford University Press.
• Williams, G.C. 1988. Huxley's Evolution and Ethics in sociobiological perspective. Zygon 23: 383-438.
• Williams, G.C. 1985. A defense of reductionism in evolutionary biology. Oxford Surv. Evol. Biol. 2: 127.
• Taylor, P.O. and G.C. Williams. 1984. Demographic parameters at evolutionary equilibrium. Canad. J. Zool. 62: 2264-2271.
• Williams, G.C. 1975. Sex and Evolution. Princeton University Press.
• Williams, G.C. 1966. Adaptation and Natural Selection. Princeton University Press.

External links

• Official website
• article from Science by Carl Zimmer
• A Conversation With George C. Williams by Frans Roes