Adam Eyre-Walker

Eyre-Walker took his B.Sc. at the University of Nottingham and Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh.{{cite web |title=Professor Adam Eyre-Walker |url=https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p34777-adam-eyre-walker |website=University of Sussex |access-date=7 June 2022}} His doctoral thesis, submitted in 1992, was titled Studies of Synonymous Codon Evolution in Mammals and supervised by William G. Hill.{{cite journal |last1=Eyre-Walker |first1=Adam |title=Studies of Synonymous Codon Evolution in Mammals |url=https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/14820 |website=Edinburgh Research Archive |year=1992 |publisher=University of Edinburgh |access-date=8 June 2022}} Eyre-Walker joined the University of Sussex in 1997.

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His research focuses on molecular and genome evolution, and studies the rate, pattern and effects of genetic mutations through the statistical analysis of DNA sequences and mathematical modeling from an evolutionary perspective.{{cite book | author = John A. Long | date = 22 October 2012 | title = The Dawn of the Deed: The Prehistoric Origins of Sex | publisher = University of Chicago Press | page = 137 | isbn = 978-0-226-00211-8 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=h_mMg0qAjgoC|access-date=7 June 2022}} According to Eyre-Walker: "One of the central mysteries of evolution is how much of it is due to adaptive evolution at the molecular level. I have devoted much of my career in one way or another to answering this question and those related to it. It seems that adaptive evolution has a major role to play in many species, but we are far from understanding the full picture."

In 2013, with Nina Stoletzki, Eyre-Walker published research arguing that scientists are poor at assessing one another's work: "... scientists have little ability to judge either the intrinsic merit of a paper or its likely impact....the number of citations a paper receives is an extremely error-prone measure of scientific merit.... [and] impact factor is likely to be a poor measure of merit, since it depends on subjective assessment".{{cite journal |title=Blog: Injury Prevention: Impact factor revisited |journal=British Medical Journal |date=15 October 2013 |url=https://blogs.bmj.com/injury-prevention/2013/10/15/impact-factor-revisited/ |access-date=7 June 2022}}{{cite book |last1=Witkowski |first1=Tomasz |last2=Zatonski |first2=Maciej |title=Psychology Gone Wrong: The Dark Sides of Science and Therapy |date=2015 |publisher=BrownWalker |isbn=9781627345286 |page=66 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ruaRCgAAQBAJ |access-date=7 June 2022}} He concluded: "Scientists are probably the best judges of science, but they are pretty bad at it".{{cite web |title=Scientists bad at judging peers' published work |website=Australasian Science |access-date=7 June 2022 |date=October 2013|url=http://www.australasianscience.com.au/news/october-2013/scientists-bad-judging-peers%E2%80%99-published-work.html}}

Two years later, Eyre-Walker and colleagues Isabelle Cook and Sam Grange researched the optimal size and structure of scientific laboratories. By analyzing data from almost 400 different laboratories, they reported that the bigger the lab, the more productive it is (measured in number of publications, impact factor of the journals in which group members publish papers, and number of citations).{{cite journal | last1 = Woolston | first1 = Chris | title = Group dynamics: A lab of their own | journal = Nature | date = March 2016 | volume = 531 | issue = 7593 | pages = 264–265 | issn = 0028-0836 | eissn = 1476-4687 | doi = 10.1038/nj7593-263a | pmid = 26966744 | doi-access = free }}{{cite journal | last1 = Cook | first1 = Isabelle | last2 = Grange | first2 = Sam | last3 = Eyre-Walker | first3 = Adam | title = Research groups: How big should they be? | journal = PeerJ | date = 9 June 2015 | volume = 3 | page = e989 | eissn = 2167-8359 | doi = 10.7717/peerj.989 | pmid = 26082872 | pmc = 4465944 | doi-access = free }}

Eyre-Walker won the 2002 Balfour Prize from the Genetics Society and earned the President's award from the European Society for Evolutionary Biology in 2012. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2020.{{cite news |last1=Doherty-Cove |first1=Jody |title=University of Sussex professor made a Fellow of the Royal Society |url=https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/18422203.university-sussex-professor-made-fellow-royal-society/ |access-date=7 June 2022 |work=The Argus |date=2 May 2020}}

• {{cite journal | last1 = Hodgkinson | first1 = Alan | last2 = Eyre-Walker | first2 = Adam | title = Variation in the mutation rate across mammalian genomes | journal = Nature Reviews Genetics | date = 4 October 2011 | volume = 12 | issue = 11 | pages = 756–766 | issn = 1471-0056 | eissn = 1471-0064 | doi = 10.1038/nrg3098 | pmid = 21969038 | s2cid = 7466314 | url = https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg3098|access-date=6 June 2022| url-access = subscription }}}
• {{cite journal | last1 = Eyre-Walker | first1 = Adam | last2 = Keightley | first2 = Peter D. | title = The distribution of fitness effects of new mutations | journal = Nature Reviews Genetics | date = August 2007 | volume = 8 | issue = 8 | pages = 610–618 | issn = 1471-0056 | eissn = 1471-0064 | doi = 10.1038/nrg2146 | pmid = 17637733 | s2cid = 10868777 | url =https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg2146|access-date=6 June 2022| url-access = subscription }}
• {{cite journal | last1 = Smith | first1 = Nick G. C. | last2 = Eyre-Walker | first2 = Adam | title = Adaptive protein evolution in Drosophila | journal = Nature | date = February 2002 | volume = 415 | issue = 6875 | pages = 1022–1024 | issn = 0028-0836 | eissn = 1476-4687 | doi = 10.1038/4151022a | pmid = 11875568 | s2cid = 4426258 | url = https://www.nature.com/articles/4151022a|access-date=6 June 2022| url-access = subscription }}
• {{cite journal | last1 = Eyre-Walker | first1 = Adam | last2 = Keightley | first2 = Peter D. | title = High genomic deleterious mutation rates in hominids | journal = Nature | date = January 1999 | volume = 397 | issue = 6717 | pages = 344–347 | issn = 0028-0836 | eissn = 1476-4687 | doi = 10.1038/16915 | pmid = 9950425 | bibcode = 1999Natur.397..344E | s2cid = 4314159 | url = https://www.nature.com/articles/16915|access-date=6 June 2022| url-access = subscription }}}
• {{cite journal | last1 = Eyre-Walker | first1 = Adam | last2 = Stoletzki | first2 = Nina | title = The Assessment of Science: The Relative Merits of Post-Publication Review, the Impact Factor, and the Number of Citations | journal = PLOS Biology | date = 8 October 2013 | volume = 11 | issue = 10 | page = e1001675 | eissn = 1545-7885 | doi = 10.1371/journal.pbio.1001675 | pmid = 24115908 | pmc = 3792863 | doi-access = free }}

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Category:Living people

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Category:British evolutionary biologists