Narrow Roads of Gene Land The Collected Papers of W. D. Hamilton Volume 2: Evolution of Sex

W.D. Hamilton is considered by many the most important theoretical biologist of the 20th century. He has made major discoveries in evolutionary biology, genetics, and social behavior, and his essays continue to exert tremendous influence throughout the discipline. This second volume of his collected papers focuses on his groundbreaking work on sex and sexual selection. It contains the 18 papers he published between 1980 and 1991, many of them examining the role of parasites and disease in promoting genetic diversity. For each paper, Hamilton has written an accessible introduction describing why the work was done, how the paper came to be written, and its eventual fate. An invaluable collection for biologists, this book also provides general readers with deep insights into the sometimes surprising mechanics of evolutionary processes.

W. D. Hamilton is one of the most influential biologists of the 20th century and is widely regarded as the most important theoretical innovator in the evolutionary study of behavior since Darwin. He is known throughout the world for his seminal work on social evolution (kin selection), sex ratio evolution and, more recently, for work on the involvement of parasites in sexual selection and on the evolutionary maintenance of sexuality. A Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Hamilton is a Royal Society Research Professor in the Zoology Department at Oxford University. His awards include the Albert Wander Foundation Prize (Switzerland, 1992), the Crafoord Prize (Sweden, 1993), and the Kyoto Prize (Japan, 1993).