MICHAEL T. GHISELIN
Senior Research Fellow
Chair, Center for the History and Philosophy of Science
Evolutionary biologist, Darwin scholar, former zoology professor at the University of California Berkeley, and MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Dr. Ghiselin joined the staff of the Academy’s Invertebrate Zoology and Geology Department as Senior Research Fellow in 1983. He received his doctorate from Stanford University in 1965 and served two post-doctoral fellowships: one with Ernst Mayr at Harvard University and another at Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory.
His research concerns major aspects of evolutionary biology, chemical defense in opisthobranch gastropods, and various aspects of the history and philosophy of science. Ghiselin helped to found the International Society for Bioeconomics and became its Vice President and co-Editor of its Journal of Bioeconomics. The University of Siena established the first academic chair in that discipline and appointed Dr. Ghislelin as its first occupant for three weeks in 2008.
Selected Publications:
Ghiselin, M.T. 1969. The Triumph of the Darwinian Method. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Ghiselin, M.T. 1974. The Economy and Evolution of Sex. University of California Press. Berkeley.
Ghiselin, M.T. 1997. Metaphysics and the Origin of Species. State University of New York Press, Albany.
Ghiselin, M.T. 2007. Is the Pope a Catholic? Biology and Philosophy 22: 283-291.
Ghiselin, M.T. 2009. Darwin: A Reader's Guide. Occasional Papers of the California Academy of Sciences 155: 1-185.