Ohta, Tomoko (1933–)
Ohta, Tomoko (1933–)
Japanese geneticist. Born Sept 7, 1933, in Aichi Prefecture, near Nagoya, Japan; University of Tokyo, BS in agriculture, 1956; North Carolina State University, PhD, 1967.
Among the 1st women to attend University of Tokyo, worked for population geneticist Motoo Kimura at National Institute of Genetics in Mishima; helped Kimura support his theory of the way in which certain body chemicals evolved; adhered to controversial "neutral mutation-random drift" hypothesis, which maintains that most evolution at the molecular level is not caused by Darwinian natural selection but rather by random processes; best known as originator and major proponent of "nearly neutral theory" of molecular evolution; at National Institute of Genetics, served as head of the 1st laboratory of the department of population genetics (1977–84), as professor (1984–97), then professor emerita, and as vice director (1990–91); was 1st winner of Saruhashi Prize for women and Japan Academy Prize (1985). Writings include (with Motoo Kimura) Theoretical Aspects of Population Genetics (1971), Evolution and Varation of Multigene Families (1980), and (with Kenichi Aoki) Population Genetics and Molecular Evolution (1985).