Evolutionary biologist Mark Kirkpatrick of The University of Texas at Austin has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Among his many accomplishments, Kirkpatrick has helped explain how mating preferences drive the evolution of male traits and how sex chromosomes originate and evolve.
The National Academy of Sciences is the country's most prestigious scientific organization, and election to membership in the academy is one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist in the United States.
Kirkpatrick is the T.S. Painter Centennial Professor in Genetics in the Department of Integrative Biology in UT Austin's College of Natural Sciences. He is one of 120 new members recognized by the academy this year for distinguished and continuing achievements in original scientific research.
"Mark has long been known as one of the leaders in theoretical population genetics, that is, the formal and fundamental framework for understanding the evolutionary process," said Nancy Moran, a professor of integrative biology at UT Austin and fellow member of the National Academy of Sciences. "He is continually contributing new insights into how organisms and their genes and genomes evolve. He's also co-author on the most authoritative textbook in evolutionary biology, another indication of his breadth and of the high regard in which he is held in the field."
Kirkpatrick's election brings the number of current faculty members from UT Austin elected to the academy to 14.
He was previously elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2008) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2016). He received a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Washington in 1983. He is a member of the university's Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, and Biodiversity Center.
The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership and — with the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Medicine and National Research Council — provides science, technology and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations.
View a list of other members of the National Academies in the College of Natural Sciences.
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