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<html> <head> <title>Sewall Wright</title> <meta name="googlebot" content="noodp"> <meta name="robots" content="noodp"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="/silly-nndb-icon.png" /><style type="text/css">  </style></head> <body bgcolor=#ffffff> <center> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr><td valign=top><table width=550 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><table width="100%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" background="/nndb.gif"> <tr> <td rowspan="2" align="left" valign="top"><a href="http://www.nndb.com/"><img src="/title.gif" width="260" height="50" border=0 alt="NNDB"></a></td> <td><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="6"> <tr align="center"> <td width="25%" nowrap>This is a beta version of NNDB</td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right" valign="middle"> <form action="http://search.nndb.com/search/nndb.cgi" method="get"> <input type="hidden" name="nndb" value="1"></input> Search: <select name="omenu"> <option value="unspecified" selected>All Names</option> <option value="living">Living people</option> <option value="dead">Dead people</option> <option value="bands">Band Names</option> <option value="books">Book Titles</option> <option value="movies">Movie Titles</option> <option value="fulltext">Full Text</option> </select> for <input name="query" value="" size=24 maxlength=96> <input type=submit value="Search"> </form></td> </tr> </table>        </td></tr><tr><td bgcolor=red height=2></td></tr><map name=fool><area coords="102,0,240,14" href="/people/234/000103922/bibliography/" alt="bibliography"></map><tr bgcolor=F0F0F0><td bgcolor=F0F0F0 style="padding: 0px 15px 15px 15px;"><img src="/red-profile-2.gif" align="right" height=15 width=240 border=0 usemap=#fool> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=F0F0F0>Sewall Wright<img src="sewall-wright-2-sized.jpg" height=347 width=205 align=right hspace=10 vspace=10 alt="Sewall Wright">AKA Sewall Green WrightBorn: <a href="/lists/873/000106555/" class=proflink>21-Dec</a>-<a href="/lists/888/000105573/" class=proflink>1889</a> Birthplace: <a href="/geo/956/000081713/" class=proflink>Melrose, MA</a> Died: <a href="/lists/946/000106628/" class=proflink>3-Mar</a>-<a href="/lists/498/000106180/" class=proflink>1988</a> Location of death: <a href="/geo/589/000069382/" class=proflink>Madison, WI</a> Cause of death: <a href="/lists/338/000069131/" class=proflink>Accident - Fall</a> <a href="#FN1">[1]</a> Gender: Male Religion: <a href="/lists/279/000069072/" class=proflink>Unitarian</a> Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: <a href="/lists/642/000096354/" class=proflink>Biologist</a>Nationality: United States Executive summary: Mathematics of evolutionPopulation geneticist and evolutionary theorist Sewall Wright coined the term "genetic drift" to describe the random events that change the frequency of various alleles in a population. He used mathematics to explain the action of genes in evolution, showing how natural selection, mutation, and other evolutionary pressures affect the frequencies of alleles (viable DNA coding that occupies a specific position on a chromosome) and genotypes (the genetic makeup of an organism). Introduced in his 1931 paper "Evolution in Mendelian Populations," Wright's notion of "shifting balance" holds that a species' population is subject to different evolutionary pressures as groups become partially isolated, geographically, from others of their species, and that as one of these isolated groups arrives at a state that is better adapted to its environment through random gene-frequency drift, migrants from that group eventually travel and bring that evolutionary upgrade the species at large. This concept was disputed over several decades by <a href="/people/763/000196175/">Ronald Fisher</a>, who argued that the random gene-frequency drift was of minimal importance, and that instead large populations with large-scale selection is the most effective driver in evolution. Wright spent the first decade of his career at the Department of Agriculture, where he perfected the inbreeding coefficient, a mathematical algorithm for determining the effect of inbreeding on heterozygosity (the presence of different alleles at one or more loci on homologous chromosomes).<hr width=25% size=1 align=left><a name="FN1">[1] Complications from a broken pelvis, suffered in a fall on the ice. Father: Philip Green Wright (mathematician, b. 3-Oct-1861, d. 1934) Mother: Elizabeth Quincy Sewall (b. 5-Jul-1865, m. 7-Frb-1889, d. 1952) Brother: Philip Quincy Wright (political scientist, b. 28-Dec-1890, d. 17-Oct-1970) Brother: Theodore Paul Wright (aeronautical engineer, b. 25-May-1895, d. 21-Aug-1970) Wife: Louise Lane Williams (genetics teacher, b. 1-Aug-1894, m. 1921, d. 17-Feb-1975) Daughter: Elizabeth Rose Wright Son: Richard Herbert Wright (b. circa 1922, d. 1991) Son: Robert Wright     High School: Galesburg High School, Galesburg, IL (1906)     University: <a href="/edu/618/000111285/">BS Mathematics, Lombard College (1911)</a>     Scholar: <a href="/edu/985/000242259/">Experimental Evolution, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1911-12)</a>     University: <a href="/edu/633/000082387/">MS, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1912)</a>     University: <a href="/edu/473/000068269/">ScD, Harvard University (1915)</a>     Professor: <a href="/edu/520/000068316/">Genetics, University of Chicago (1926-55)</a>     Professor: <a href="/edu/477/000082231/">Leon J Cole Professor of Genetics, University of Wisconsin at Madison (1955-60)</a>     <a href="/gov/021/000127637/">US Agriculture Department</a> Animal Husbandry Statistician (1915-25)     NAS Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1945)     Weldon Memorial Prize (1947)     NAS Kimber Genetics Award (1956)     <a href="/honors/028/000111692/">Darwin Medal</a> (1966)     <a href="/honors/636/000042510/">National Medal of Science</a> (1966)     <a href="/honors/020/000111684/">Balzan Prize</a> (1984)     <a href="/org/640/000052484/">American Philosophical Society</a>     <a href="/org/791/000107470/">Econometric Society</a>     <a href="/org/792/000055627/">Genetics Society of America</a>     <a href="/org/261/000059084/">Society for the Study of Evolution</a> Author of books: Systems of Mating and Other Papers (<tt>1949</tt>) Genetic and Biometric Foundations (<tt>1968</tt>) Evolution and the Genetics of Populations (<tt>1968-78</tt>, four volumes) Experimental Results and Evolutionary Deductions (<tt>1977</tt>) Variability Within and Among Natural Populations (<tt>1978</tt>) Evolution: Selected Papers (<tt>1986</tt>) <table> <tr> <td align=right valign=middle style="padding-right: 5px;">New! <a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/" class="fotmlink" style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; color: #dd0000;">NNDB MAPPER</a></td> <td valign=middle align=right style="border-left: 1px solid #bbb; padding-left: 5px;">Create a map starting with</td> <td valign=middle align=right><a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=103922"><img src="/man.gif" border=0 style="padding: 2px;"></a></td> <td align=left valign=middle> <a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=103922">Sewall Wright</a></td> </tr> </table> Requires Flash 7+ and Javascript. 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