Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Martin A. Nowak is Professor of Biology and Mathematics at Harvard University and Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. He works on the mathematical description of evolutionary processes, including the evolution of cooperation and human language, as well as the dynamics of virus infections and human cancer. Major scientific contributions and discoveries include: • The mechanism of HIV disease progression • The evolution of drug resistance in HIV infection and targeted cancer therapy • Quantifying the dynamics of HBV infection and chronic myeloid leukemia • The evolution of virulence under superinfection and coinfection • The role of chromosomal instability in human cancer • The accumulation of drivers and passengers in cancer progression • The mechanisms for the evolution of genetic redundancy • "Generous tit-for-tat" and "win-stay, lose-shift" • The alternating Prisoner's Dilemma • The evolution of cooperation by indirect reciprocity • Spatial game dynamics and adaptive dynamics • Evolutionary game dynamics in finite populations • Evolutionary graph theory • The five mechanisms for the evolution of cooperation • The evolution of eusociality by natural selection • A mathematical approach for studying the evolution of human language • The dynamics of language regularization • Culturomics • "Winners don't punish" • Prelife and the origin of evolution A corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Nowak is the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Weldon Memorial Prize of Oxford University, the David Starr Jordan Prize of Stanford University, and the Akira Okubo Prize of the Society for Mathematical Biology. Nowak is the author of over 400 papers and four books.