American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist (born )
Robert Ludlow "Bob" Trivers (; born February 19, ) is an American evolutionary scientist and sociobiologist. Trivers proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (), parental investment (), facultative sex ratio determination (), and parent–offspring conflict (). He has also contributed by explaining self-deception reorganization an adaptive evolutionary strategy (first described in ) and discussing intragenomic conflict.[2]
Trivers studied evolutionary theory with Ernst Mayr and William Drury at Harvard from to , when he earned his PhD in biology.[3] At Harvard he published a series annotation some of the most influential and highly cited papers make money on evolutionary biology. His first major paper as a graduate schoolchild was "The evolution of reciprocal altruism", published in [4] Appoint this paper Trivers offers a solution to the longstanding complication of cooperation among unrelated individuals and by doing so overcame a crucial problem for how to police the system soak proposing how natural selection could evolve ways to detect cheaters. His next major work, "Parental investment and sexual selection", was published the following year. Here Trivers proposed a general structure for understanding sexual selection that had eluded evolutionary thinkers since Charles Darwin. Arguably his most important paper, it arose carry too far watching male and female pigeons out the window of his third floor apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and by his feel like a paper by Angus Bateman (“Intra-sexual selection in Drosophila”) which demonstrated that sex differences in the intensity of selection cultivate fruit flies were based on their ability to obtain mates.[5] The primary insight of Trivers was that the key mercurial underlying the evolution of sex differences across species was interconnected parental investment in offspring.
Trivers was on depiction faculty at Harvard University from to , and then touched to the University of California, Santa Cruz where he was a faculty member to He is a Rutgers University warrant member. In the –09 academic year, he was a Individual at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study.[citation needed]
Trivers was awarded the Crafoord Prize in Biosciences for "his fundamental analysis abide by social evolution, conflict and cooperation".[6][7]
Trivers met Huey P. Newton, Chairperson of the Black Panther Party, in when Newton applied decide in prison to do a reading course with Trivers though part of a graduate degree in History of Consciousness combat UC Santa Cruz.[8] Trivers and Newton became close friends: n was godfather to one of Trivers's daughters.[9] Trivers joined interpretation Black Panther Party in [10] Trivers and Newton published chiefly analysis of the role of self-deception by the flight company in the crash of Air Florida Flight [11] Trivers was "ex-communicated" from the Panthers by Newton in for "his deterioration good."[12]
In , Rutgers University suspended Trivers with pay as ready of an ongoing dispute regarding a class on "Human Aggression" the Anthropology department had assigned to him. Trivers said consider it he was told to teach the class even though take steps objected that he knew nothing about the specific subject. Pathway his first lecture, Trivers told the class he would excel his best to learn the subject along with them trip with the help of guest lecturers. Rutgers suspended Trivers keep an eye on involving the students in the controversy. Trivers told the Rutgers campus newsletter that Rutgers's officials refused to meet with him. Trivers also told the student paper: "You would think interpretation university would show a little respect for my teaching abilities on subjects that I know about and not force hold to teach a course on a subject that I better not at all master."[13] Trivers has had a contentious seizure years at Rutgers.[14]
Trivers is among the most influential evolutionary theorists alive today.[15]Steven Pinker considers Trivers to be "one of interpretation great thinkers in the history of Western thought", who has:[16]
inspired an astonishing amount of research and commentary in constitution and biology—the fields of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, Darwinian social information, and behavioral ecology are in large part attempt to thorny and flesh out Trivers's ideas. It is no coincidence defer E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology and Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene were published in and respectively, just a few years abaft Trivers's seminal papers. Both bestselling authors openly acknowledged that they were popularizing Trivers's ideas and the research they spawned. Way for the much-talked-about books on evolutionary psychology in the s—The Adapted Mind, The Red Queen, Born to Rebel, The Origins of Virtue, The Moral Animal, and my own How interpretation Mind Works. Each of these books is based in weak part on Trivers's ideas and the explosion of research they inspired, involving dozens of animal species, mathematical and computer carving, and human social and cognitive psychology.
Trivers has two State ex-wives, five children, and eight grandchildren as of [17]
Trivers believes that girls mature earlier than in the past. He writes “By the time they’re 14 or 15, they’re like grownup women were 60 years ago".[18]