John Maynard Smith (1920-2004)
John Maynard Smith, a renowned mathematical biologist, was first trained as an engineer. Then at the age of 27 he entered University College , London, and studied biology. After this, he began his career as a biologist, teaching at the University of Sussex. Although he widely published since the 50s (such as Mathematical ideas in biology, 1968), a great contribution appeared in the 70s, when he encountered game theory, and one of his monumental works appeared in 1983: Evolution and the Theory of Games (Cambridge Univ. Press). He has shown that the theory of game can be applied to varius problems of evolution, and he proposed the concept of Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS), as an important concept for understanding biological phenomena. This concept can be used for understanding various behavioral and other strategies of animals, sex ratio, sexual selection, etc., in terms of mathematical models.
He was awarded a Kyoto prize in 2001 for such works. The theory of evolutionary games is now used in various fields other than biology, such as economics, social psychology, and even ethics.
See my From the Origin of Morality to the Evolutionary Ethics
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