James F. Crow
[1][2][3][4][5][6] Some of his most significant peer-reviewed contributions were coauthored with Motoo Kimura, including those leading to the neutral theory of molecular evolution.His graduate and undergraduate students and postdocs includes Alexey Kondrashov, James Bull, Joe Felsenstein, Russell Lande, Dan Hartl,[6] and Wen-Hsiung Li.Crow graduated with his PhD in 1941 and moved to Dartmouth College just prior to the American entry into World War II, where he remained until 1948.The original plan had been to get a postdoctoral fellowship to work with Sewall Wright at the University of Chicago, but this proved difficult just at the start of the war.His appointment in Dartmouth was to teach genetics and general zoology, but as faculty were drafted off into military endeavors, Crow took on an increasing number of courses.He described mutations that have a direct visible effect on the child's health and also mutations that can be latent or have minor visible effects on the child's health; many such mutations allow the child to reproduce, but cause more serious problems for grandchildren, great-grandchildren and later generations[13] A 2009 review prematurely concluded that the absolute risk from paternal age for genetic anomalies in offspring was low, and stated that "there is no clear association between adverse health outcome and paternal age but longitudinal studies are needed.A widely-referenced Icelandic whole-genome sequencing effort led by Kári Stefánsson of DEcode Genetics and published in Nature also concluded similarly.Over a career that spanned more than 50 years, Crow and his collaborators studied a variety of traits in Drosophila, dissected the genetics of DDT resistance, measured the effects of minor mutations on the overall fitness of populations, described the behavior of mutations that do not play the selection game by Darwin’s rules, and investigated many other subjects.[24] James F. Crow died on January 4, 2012, at age 95 from congestive heart failure at his home in Madison, Wisconsin.