Martin Nowak

Martin Andreas Nowak (born April 7, 1965) is an Austrian-born mathematical biologist and the author of several books. Following the exposure of his role in allowing Jeffrey Epstein access to the campus, Nowak was placed on academic leave in May 2020 from his position as a Professor of Biology and Mathematics at Harvard University.[3][4]

Martin Nowak
Nowak at Harvard in 2014
Born
Martin Andreas Nowak

April 7, 1965 (1965-04-07) (age 55)[1]
Vienna, Austria
NationalityAustrian
Alma materUniversity of Vienna
Known forEvolution of cooperation, Evolutionary dynamics, Language evolution,
AwardsWeldon Memorial Prize
Albert Wander Prize
Scientific career
FieldsMathematical biology
InstitutionsHarvard University
Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry
University of Oxford
Princeton University
Institute for Advanced Study
Doctoral advisorKarl Sigmund
Other academic advisorsRobert May
Doctoral studentsDavid G. Rand
Erez Lieberman Aiden[2]
Websitewww.martinnowak.com

Education

Nowak studied at the Albertus Magnus Gymnasium in Vienna. He attended the University of Vienna, and earned his Ph.D. in biochemistry and mathematics in 1989, working with Peter Schuster on quasi-species theory and with Karl Sigmund on evolution of cooperation. He received the highest Austrian honors (Sub auspiciis Praesidentis) when awarded his degree.[5]

Career

In 1989, he moved to the University of Oxford as an Erwin Schrödinger postdoctoral Scholar to work with Robert May, becoming Head of Mathematical Biology in 1995 and Professor of Mathematical Biology in 1997. In 1998 he moved to the Institute for Advanced Study to establish the first program in Theoretical Biology there. In 2003, Nowak was recruited to Harvard University as Professor of Mathematics and Biology.[6] He is Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED)[7] which was funded with a $30-million pledge by Jeffrey Epstein and his foundation, the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation,[8] a friend of Nowak who had supported his work in the past.[9]

Nowak works on the dynamics of infectious diseases, cancer genetics, the evolution of cooperation and human language. His first book, Virus Dynamics (written with Robert May) was published by Oxford University Press, 2000. Nowak is a corresponding member of the Austrian academy of sciences. He won the Weldon Memorial Prize, the Albert Wander Prize, the Akira Okubo Prize, the David Starr Jordan Prize[10] and the Henry Dale Prize. His 2006 book Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life[11] was published in 2006 to critical acclaim[12] and won the Association of American Publishers R.R. Hawkins Award for the Outstanding Professional, Reference or Scholarly Work of 2006.[13]

Nowak was co-director with Sarah Coakley of the Evolution and Theology of Cooperation project at Harvard University, sponsored by the Templeton Foundation.[14] He is also a member of the Board of Advisers of the Templeton Foundation.[15] In a lecture given at Harvard in March 2007 called "Evolution and Christianity", Nowak, a Roman Catholic,[16] argued that "Science and religion are two essential components in the search for truth. Denying either is a barren approach."[17]

Harvard University suspended Nowak on May 1, 2020 because of his affiliation with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.[3] A report commissioned by the university found that, although Nowak had repeatedly requested to be allowed access to Epstein's philanthropy in the years following Epstein's conviction, he was blocked by Harvard administrators. Nonetheless, Nowak allowed Epstein ongoing access to visit the university, to maintain an office and phone line, and to interact with students at PED.[18][4] Wired stated that Nowak also played a role in substantiating Epstein's false claims to MIT administrators that he had given tens of millions of dollars to Harvard.[19] Moreover, as noted by the Harvard Crimson, Epstein was at this time using his philanthropy and relationship with Nowak to rehabilitate his public image.[20]

Academic research

In 1990, Nowak and Robert May proposed a mathematical model which explained the puzzling delay between HIV infection and AIDS in terms of the evolution of different strains of the virus during individual infections, to the point where the genetic diversity of the virus reaches a threshold whereby the immune system can no longer control it.[21] This detailed quantitative approach depended on assumptions about the biology of HIV which were subsequently confirmed by experiment.[22]

In a paper in Science in 2006, Nowak enunciated and unified the mathematical rules for the five understood bases of the evolution of cooperation (kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection). Nowak suggests that evolution is constructive because of cooperation, and that we might add “natural cooperation” as a third fundamental principle of evolution beside mutation and natural selection.[23]

In a paper featured on the front cover of Nature in 2007, Nowak and colleagues demonstrated that the transition of irregular verbs to regular verbs in English over time obeys a simple inverse-square law, thus providing one of the first quantitative laws in the evolution of language.[24]

He has over 300 scientific publications, of which 40 are in Nature and 15 in Science.[25]

Nowak's research interests include:

Supercooperators

In 2011, Nowak’s book Supercooperators: The Mathematics of Evolution, Altruism and Human Behaviour (Or, Why We Need Each Other to Succeed) was published, co-authored with Roger Highfield.

Manfred Milinski in Nature describes the book as "part autobiography, part textbook, and reads like a best-selling novel" and suggests that whereas Nowak is right that the theories of kin selection and punishment need revisiting, it is too soon to tell whether his bold ideas will hold up to empirical testing. On the Nowak/Tarnita/Wilson paper Milinski says: "I anticipate that a better mathematical formulation of social evolution theory will be found that includes relatedness, is compatible with existing evidence and includes Hamilton's rule as a rule of thumb."[26]

David Willetts, in the Financial Times, described the book as an "excellent example" of using the nexus of evolutionary biology, game theory and neuroscience to understand the development of cooperation in society, and suggests that "all politicians can draw inspiration and ideas from the intellectual resources of this exciting approach"[27]

gollark: There have been a bunch of instances of Google making it annoying or misleading to *actually* turn off location history on Android, for instance.
gollark: Okay? That doesn't actually mean Google aren't gathering data if you literally use their browser, OS and apps?
gollark: Do you just not care about privacy? All of those (I mean, except cloud storage) seem to be available in open source or more privacy-respecting forms which are *still* free.
gollark: <@209777632324091905> Firefox can do cross-browser syncing *too*, and the "just works" and "has all your data" thing means Google is also probably data-mining you to death.
gollark: What is WRONG™ with Brave Browser?

References
  1. The Boston Globe October 15, 2007
  2. Martin Nowak at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  3. Levenson, Michael (2020-05-01). "Harvard Kept Ties With Jeffrey Epstein After '08 Conviction, Report Shows". The New York Times. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
  4. Svrluga, Susan (May 1, 2020). "Jeffrey Epstein had his own office at Harvard University — after he was convicted as a sex offender". Washington Post. Retrieved 2020-06-08.
  5. Witzmann, Erich (2011-04-03). "Martin Nowak: "Junge sollen unabhängig forschen"". Die Presse (in German). Retrieved 2020-06-08.
  6. Bio-details used with thanks from the PED website Archived 2006-12-11 at the Wayback Machine
  7. "Program for Evolutionary Dynamics".
  8. Financier pledges $30 million to support Harvard researcher, The Associated Press, 7 February 2003
  9. Landon Thomas Jr. (2002-10-28). "Jeffrey Epstein: International Money Man of Mystery". New York Magazine.
  10. "David Starr Jordan Prize recipients". Archived from the original on 2014-08-25. Retrieved 2007-02-15.
  11. Nowak, Martin (October 2006). Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life. Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02338-3.
  12. e.g. in Nature "It should be on the shelf of anyone who has, or thinks they might have, an interest in theoretical biology" " wonderfully well-presented, and offers a new range of insights into interesting and important and emerging topics in mathematical biology." Robert May. ""rigor and new ideas into the study of the evolution of language and cooperation...brimming with insights and surprising findings and should be of interest to anyone who is curious about these topics" Steven Pinker "A brilliant book by a master of his field" Robert Trivers "a remarkable book, absolutely original, containing a lot of material which has never before appeared in book form. It is written in a very accessible style, and leads almost effortlessly from first principles to state-of-the-art research. The book takes an eagle's view on evolution, covering a vast range of topics from molecules to man. It emphasises analytical methods and presents a large canvas of superbly elegant mathematical models." Karl Sigmund
  13. Harvard release on RR Hawkins Award Archived 2008-05-16 at the Wayback Machine
  14. Evolution and Theology of Cooperation
  15. About Us : Who We Are : Board of Advisors Archived 2007-01-23 at the Wayback Machine
  16. "Super Cooperators". 23 May 2011.
  17. "Can science, religion coexist in peace?". 15 March 2007.
  18. Bikales, James S. (2020-05-01). "FAS Places Prof. Nowak On Leave After Report Finds Epstein Used His Program to Rehabilitate Image". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
  19. Cohen, Noam (May 4, 2020). "For Jeffrey Epstein, MIT Was Just a Safety School". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved 2020-06-08.
  20. The Harvard Crimson. "What Harvard Sold Jeffrey Epstein." Editorial (2020)
  21. Eigen, M.; Nieselt-Struwe, K. (1990). "How old is the immunodeficiency virus?". AIDS. 4: S95–7. doi:10.1097/00002030-199001001-00014. PMID 2152591.
  22. See Evolutionary Dynamics p171, etc.
  23. Nowak, M. A. (2006). "Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation". Science. 314 (5805): 1560–1563. Bibcode:2006Sci...314.1560N. doi:10.1126/science.1133755. PMC 3279745. PMID 17158317.
  24. Lieberman, E.; Michel, J. B.; Jackson, J.; Tang, T.; Nowak, M. A. (2007). "Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language". Nature. 449 (7163): 713–716. Bibcode:2007Natur.449..713L. doi:10.1038/nature06137. PMC 2460562. PMID 17928859.
  25. http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ped/people/faculty/all_publications.html
  26. Milinski, M. (2011). "Biology: A revolution in evolution". Nature. 471 (7338): 294–295. Bibcode:2011Natur.471..294M. doi:10.1038/471294b.
  27. The invisible hand that binds us all by David Willetts FT 24-Apr-2011
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