Alan Grafen

{{Short description|Scottish ethologist and evolutionary biologist}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=September 2019}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Alan Grafen

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| birth_place = Dollar, Clackmannanshire

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| citizenship = United Kingdom

| nationality = Scottish

| fields = Ethology, Evolutionary biology

| workplaces = University of Oxford

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| doctoral_advisor = Richard Dawkins

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| doctoral_students = {{Plainlist|

• Laurence Hurst
• Yan Wong

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| thesis_title = The economics of evolutionary stability

| thesis_year = 1984

| thesis_url = http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/dlDisplay.do?vid=OXVU1&docId=oxfaleph012272800

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| website = {{URL|https://users.ox.ac.uk/~grafen/}}

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Alan Grafen {{postnominals|country=GBR|FRS}} is a Scottish ethologist and evolutionary biologist. He currently teaches and undertakes research at St John's College, Oxford.https://users.ox.ac.uk/~grafen/ Alan Grafen's Web Page at Oxford University Along with regular contributions to scientific journals, Grafen is known publicly for his work as co-editor (with Mark Ridley) of the 2006 festschrift Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think,{{cite book |author1=Ridley, Mark |author2=Grafen, Alan |title=Richard Dawkins: how a scientist changed the way we think: reflections by scientists, writers, and philosophers |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford [Oxfordshire] |year=2006 |isbn=0-19-929116-0 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/richarddawkinsho00alan }} honouring the achievements of his colleague and former academic advisor. He has worked extensively in the field of biological game theory, and, in 1990, devised a model showing that Zahavi's well-known handicap principle could theoretically exist in natural populations.{{Cite journal

| last1 = Grafen | first1 = A.

| title = Biological signals as handicaps

| journal = Journal of Theoretical Biology

| volume = 144

| issue = 4

| pages = 517–546

| year = 1990

| pmid = 2402153

| doi=10.1016/S0022-5193(05)80088-8

| bibcode = 1990JThBi.144..517G

}}{{cite journal|title=Sexual selection unhandicapped by the Fisher process|first=Alan|last=Grafen|date=1 June 1990|journal=Journal of Theoretical Biology|volume=144|issue=4|pages=473–516|doi=10.1016/s0022-5193(05)80087-6|pmid = 2402152|bibcode=1990JThBi.144..473G }}

He also published a seminal paper in the field of phylogenetic comparative methods, in which he demonstrated how the tools of generalized least squares could be applied to perform phylogenetically informed statistical analyses.Grafen, A. 1989. The phylogenetic regression. Phil. Trans. Royal. Soc. Lond. B 326:119-157.

Grafen was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2011.{{cite web | url = http://royalsociety.org/people/alan-grafen/| title=Professor Alan Grafen FRS|publisher = Royal Society|access-date = 2012-03-18}}