Citizenship Taiwanese-American Doctoral advisor Wendell Fleming Name Wen-Hsiung Li | Nationality Taiwanese | |
Born Wen Hsiung Li
September 22, 1942 (age 81)
Pingtung, Taiwan ( 1942-09-22 ) Institutions University of Chicago
Academia Sinica
University of Texas
University of Wisconsin-Madison Alma mater Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
National Central University, Taiwan
Chung-Yuang College of Science and Engineering, Taiwan Thesis Mathematical Studies On Mutational Damages In Finite Populations (1972) Education National Taiwan University Books Molecular Evolution PB Fields Mathematics, Genetics, Evolutionary biology, Genomics | ||
Other academic advisors Masatoshi Nei |
Big Data and Science | Wen Hsiung Li
Wen-Hsiung Li (Traditional Chinese:李文雄, 1942-) is a Taiwanese American scientist working in the fields of molecular evolution, population genetics, and genomics. He is currently the James Watson Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Information Science and Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
Contents
- Big Data and Science Wen Hsiung Li
- Biography
- Scientific contributions
- Honors
- Selected publications
- Selected books
- References
Biography
Li was born in 1942 in Taiwan. In 1968 he received a M.S. in geophysics from National Central University. In 1972 he received his Ph.D in applied mathematics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. From 1972 to 1973 he was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin Madison (genetics), working with James F. Crow. In 1973 he moved to the University of Texas, where he was appointed as a professor in 1984. Since 1998 he has been a professor at The University of Chicago.
Scientific contributions
Professor Li is best known for his studies on the molecular clock (i.e. rates and patterns of DNA sequence evolution) and on the patterns and consequences of gene duplication.
In 2003, he received the international Balzan Prize for his contribution to genetics and evolutionary biology, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, who cited his role in "establishing theoretical foundations for molecular phylogenetics and evolutionary genomics"[1]. He is the author of the first texts in the field of molecular evolution, Molecular Evolution and Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution (co-authored with Dan Graur), and an author on more than 200 peer-reviewed publications.