The engineer explaining the evolution of complexity: Who is John Maynard Smith?

John Maynard Smith (1920-2014) is one of the respected and prominent British evolutionary theorists.

Maynard Smith, originally an engineer, worked with Haldane at the University of London after the war. After the 1960s, he continued his studies at the University of Sussex, England.

John Maynard Smith (6 January 1920 – 19 April 2004) was a British theoretical and mathematical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J. B. S. Haldane. Maynard Smith was instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution with George R. Price, and theorised on other problems such as the evolution of sex and signalling theory.

Over the last 40 years, Maynard Smith has worked extensively and has made significant contributions on a variety of topics, including:

* The cost of sex and why sexual reproduction is so common.

* Many aspects of sexual selection, including the definition of handicap and the principle of competition.

* Compatibility issues and especially compatibility restrictions.

In recent years, Maynard Smith has worked on broader issues such as the evolution of language and the importance of evolutionary biology in explaining human behavior.

When John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry's The Major Transitions in Evolution was first published, it was considered a very important work in biology. Nature magazine hailed the book as a magnificent and promising show of strength, while New Scientist magazine wrote that the study, which it said captured the essence of modern biology, was an extremely important book that could be easily read.

Maynard Smith and Szathmáry have completely rewritten the aforementioned work to bring their ideas to a wider audience of general readers. This is how the Origins of Life appeared. In this book, Maynard Smith and Szathmáry provide a bright and original picture of how life on Earth has evolved from tiny invisible cells to whales, trees, and humans, focusing on six key transitions and dramatic breaking points in the transmission of knowledge across generations.

This book is considered a reference book that explains with extraordinary clarity how life came into being, chemical evolution, the transition from RNA to DNA, the origin of sex, symbiosis, and billions of years of living evolution.

How did a life that started from a hot soup of carbon evolve into viruses, cells, and us? How and why did the sexes separate? What is the evolution of complexity? How did symbiosis occur between different species? The book sought answers to these and other questions.

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John Maynard Smith: evolutionary biology and the Logic of Animal Conflict

https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2020/03/john-maynard-smith-evolutionary-biology-and-the-logic-of-animal-conflict.html