Wagner, Günter P. 1954-

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Wagner, Günter P. 1954-

(Günter Paul Wagner)

PERSONAL:

Born May 28, 1954, in Vienna, Austria; immigrated to the United States, 1991; son of Otto Karl and Käthe Auguste Wagner; married Herta Ruttner Brinkmann, December 31, 1978 (divorced, 1985); married Michaela Sabine Hauser, July 19, 1985; children: (first marriage) Susanne Karoline; (second marriage) Veronika Eszter, Nikolas Frederik. Education: University of Vienna, Ph.D., 1979. Hobbies and other interests: Literature, music, canoeing, horseback riding, fencing.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Cheshire, CT. Office— Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, Osborne Memorial Laboratories, P.O. Box 208106, 165 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06520-8106; fax: 203-432-3870. E-mail—gunter. [email protected].

CAREER:

University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, assistant professor, 1985-90, associate professor, 1990-91; Yale University, New Haven, CT, professor of biology, 1991-2003, Allison Richard Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 2003—, chairman of department, 2005—. Member of the scientific advisory board, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research; visiting professor at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 1987-88, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland, 1991, and University of Leiden, The Netherlands, 1995; lecturer, University of California, Berkeley, 1993. MEMBER: American Association for the Advancement of Science (fellow), European Society for Evolutionary Biology, Society for the Study of Evolution, Society of Systematic Biology, Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Austrian Academy of Sciences; Honorary M.A., Yale University, 1992; MacArthur Foundation prize, 1992; Humboldt research prize, 2005.

WRITINGS:

(With others) Evolution, Ordnung und Erkenntnis, P. Parey (Berlin, Germany), 1985.

(Editor) The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology, Academic Press (San Diego, CA), 2001.

(Editor, with Gerhard Schlosser) Modularity in Development and Evolution, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2004.

Contributor to academic journals. Member of various editorial boards.

SIDELIGHTS:

Austrian-born biologist Günter P. Wagner edited The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology. The twenty-five chapters are divided into sections that define the term "character" as used in evolutionary biology, and address new approaches to the concept, the mechanistic nature of character, and evolutionary character origins. In defining and describing the character concept, contributors draw on the history and philosophy of science, molecular and quantitative genetics, biomathematics, functional morphology, optimality theory, developmental biology, paleontology and phylogenetics, and systematics. Reviewing the title, Geerat J. Vermeij wrote in the Quarterly Review of Biology: "From a highly abstract, and often impenetrably woolly first half, the book proceeds to progressively more concrete chapters on the origins and regulation of the characters, parts, and patterns of organisms." In a Journal of Biology review, Bernard J. Crespi wrote: "This book is the ultimate in tool kits…. The level of scholarship is extraordinarily high."

With Gerhard Schlosser, Wagner is editor of Modularity in Development and Evolution. In a review for Science, Lauren Ancel Meyers wrote: "The compelling consensus that emerges from this volume places biological modularity on firm scientific footing. Loosely speaking, biological modules are consortia that act autonomously to produce a single form or function and are redeployed within and across species, thereby creating novelty and fueling the development and evolution of biological complexity." Meyers described Wagner and Schlosser as "two pioneers at the interface between evolutionary and developmental biology."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Volume 14, 2001, Bernard J. Crespi, review of The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology.

Nature, August 26, 2004, Hans Meinhardt, review of Modularity in Development and Evolution.

Quarterly Review of Biology, September, 2001, Geerat J. Vermeij, review of The Character Concept in Evolutionary Biology, p. 355; June, 2005, Patricia Beldade, review of Modularity in Development and Evolution, p. 245.

Science, October 29, 2004, Lauren Ancel Meyers, review of Modularity in Development and Evolution, p. 814.