A. W. F. Edwards

A. W. F. Edwards
FRS
Edwards at the Royal Society admissions day in 2015
Born
Anthony William Fairbank Edwards

(1935-10-04) 4 October 1935 (age 89)[1]
London,[1] England
EducationUniversity of Cambridge
FatherHarold C. Edwards
RelativesJohn H. Edwards (brother)
Scientific career
FieldsStatistics, genetics
Institutions
Doctoral studentsElizabeth A. Thompson
Websiteroyalsociety.org/people/anthony-edwards-11379/

Anthony William Fairbank Edwards, FRS[2] (born 1935) is a British statistician, geneticist and evolutionary biologist. Edwards is regarded as one of Britain's most distinguished geneticists,[3] and as one of the most influential mathematical geneticists in the history.[4] He is the son of the surgeon Harold C. Edwards, and brother of medical geneticist John H. Edwards. Edwards has sometimes been called "Fisher's Edwards" to distinguish him from his brother, because he was mentored by Ronald Fisher.[5] He has always had a high regard for Fisher's scientific contributions and has written extensively on them. To mark the Fisher centenary in 1990, Edwards proposed a commemorative Sir Ronald Fisher window be installed in the Dining Hall of Gonville & Caius College. When the window was removed in 2020, he vigorously opposed the move.[6]

In 1963 and 1964, Edwards, along with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, introduced novel methods for computing evolutionary trees from genetical data.[7]

  1. ^ a b "Edwards, Prof. Anthony William Fairbank". Who's Who (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. 2016. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ "Professor Anthony (A.W.F.) Edwards FRS". London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:

    "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --"Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  3. ^ "10 Questions for A.W.F. Edwards". Gene Expression. 28 August 2006. Retrieved 1 July 2024.
  4. ^ Winther, Rasmus Grønfeldt, ed. (2018). Phylogenetic Inference, Selection Theory, and History of Science: Selected Papers of A. W. F. Edwards with Commentaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. i. ISBN 978-1-107-11172-1.
  5. ^ Winther, Rasmus Grønfeldt (2018). Phylogenetic Inference, Selection Theory, and History of Science: Selected Papers of A. W. F. Edwards with Commentaries. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. p. 519. ISBN 9781107111721.
  6. ^ Edwards, A.W.F (March 2021). "Cancelled by his college". The Critic.
  7. ^ Edwards, A. W. F. (2009). "Statistical Methods for Evolutionary Trees". Genetics. 183 (1): 5–12. doi:10.1534/genetics.109.107847. ISSN 0016-6731. PMC 2746166. PMID 19797062.