Gustave Malécot
Gustave Malécot (
December 28 1911 — November 1998) was a
French mathematician whose work on
heredity had a strong influence on
population genetics.
Malécot grew up in
L'Horme, a small village near
St. Étienne in the
Loire département, the son of a mine engineer.
In 1935, Malécot a degree in
mathematics from the
École Normale Supérieure,
Paris. He then went on to do a PhD under
George Darmois and completed that in 1939. His work focused on
R.A. Fisher's 1918 article
The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance.
Between 1940 and 1942, with France under
Nazi German occupation, Malécot taught mathematics at the Lyceé de Saint-Étienne. In 1942 he was appointed maître de conférence (lecturer)
Université de Montpellier. In 1945 he joined the
Université de Lyon, becoming professor of
applied mathematics in 1946, a position he held until his retirement in 1981.
Malécot's Coancestry Coefficent, a measure of genetic similarity, still bears his name.
* Epperson, Bryan K. (1999). Gustave Malécot, 1911â€"1998: Population Genetics Founding Father.
Genetics 152, 477-484.
link to article* Nagylaki, Thomas (1989). Gustave Malécot and the transition from classical to modern population genetics.
Genetics 122, 253â€"268.
link to article* Slatkin, Montgomery & Veuille, Michel (Eds.) (2002).
Modern developments in theoretical population genetics: the legacy of Gustave Malécot. Oxford : Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-859963-3.
*
L'Å"uvre scientifique de Gustave Malécot, 1911-1998 (pdf, in French)
