Brian Goodwin

Brian Carey Goodwin ( born March 25, 1931 in Sainte -Anne- de -Bellevue, Quebec, † July 15, 2009 in Torbay ) was a Canadian mathematician and biologist.

He studied biology at McGill University and then emigrated to Britain, where he studied mathematics at Oxford and received his PhD in Edinburgh in biology and mathematics. He researched and taught at MIT and at the University of Sussex. At the Open University, he worked as a professor of biology until he retired in 1992. Goodwin is a founding member of the Santa Fe Institute and taught last holistic science at Schumacher College in Dartington, Devon.

Goodwin has done research in the field of theoretical biology, mathematical and physical methods uses to understand biological processes. Goodwin's specialties were morphogenesis and evolution. On the role of natural selection, he has developed a critical assessment. He advocated to explain biology from the perspective of Complex Systems and for uniting the natural sciences and the human sciences together.

Publications

• Signs of Life: How Complexity pervades Biology, Ricard V. Sole, Basic Books, 2001, ISBN 0465019277

• How the Leopard Changed its Spots: The Evolution of Complexity, Scribner, 1994, ISBN 0025447106 ( German: The leopard lose its spots, Piper, Munich 1997, ISBN 3492038735 )

• Form and Transformation: Generative and Relational Principles in Biology, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

• Mechanical Engineering of the Cytoskeleton in Developmental Biology ( International Review of Cytology ), Kwang W. Jeon and with Richard J. Gordon, Academic Press, London 1994, ISBN 0123645530

• Theoretical Biology: Epigenetic and Evolutionary Order for Complex Systems with Peter Saunders, Edinburgh University Press, 1989, ISBN 0852246005