Walter M. Fitch

Walter Monroe Fitch ( born May 21, 1929 in San Diego, † March 10, 2011 in Irvine, California ) was an American molecular biologist and evolutionary researchers. He is considered the founder of molecular phylogeny.

Walter Fitch graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, 1953 Bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1958 and a doctorate degree in biochemistry. After several years of research as a post- graduate student, he taught from 1962 to 1986 as a professor at the School of Medicine of the University of Wisconsin- Madison. He then moved to the University of Southern California, where he was from 1986 to 1989 professor of biology and thereafter until his death held a chair of ecology and evolutionary biology.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he dealt among other things with theories of evolution at the level of molecules. Could He designed computer algorithms that help determine the phylogenetic proximity of organisms based on protein or nucleotide sequences and illustrated graphically in phylogenetic trees by distance matrix ( " Fitch - Margoliash method" and " Fitch parsimony algorithm" ). As a model case, he served in particular cytochrome c. He developed methods to distinguish homologous and analogous structures in proteins can, a prerequisite for the reconstruction of a phylogeny based on biochemical characteristics.

When his main scientific work is considered published in 1967 in Science Study Construction of Phylogenetic Trees ( " The construction of phylogenetic trees " ), which is regarded as one of the founding texts of molecular phylogeny. He also dealt with the reconstruction of the molecular evolution of the HI virus and influenza viruses.

Walter Fitch ran from 1983 for ten years, the newly founded journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, and in 1992 was co-founder and founding chair of the Society for moleculare Biology and Evolution. According to him, the Walter M. Fitch Award of the Society for Biology and Evolution moleculare was named in 1993. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Linnean Society of London and the American Philosophical Society.

Fitch left at his death, the nearly completed manuscript for his book Logic, Rhetoric, and Science: And Why Creationism Fails at All Three, which in March 2012 under the title The Three Failures of Creationism: Logic, Rhetoric, and Science in the publishing house of the University of California has been released.

Works (selection)

  • With Emanuel Margoliash: Construction of phylogenetic trees. In: Science, Vol 155, No 3760, 1967, pp. 279-284, doi: 10.1126/science.155.3760.279, Full Text (PDF; 356 kB)
  • With Emanuel Margoliash: A method for estimating the number of invariant amino acid coding positions in a gene using cytochrome c as a model case. In: Biochemical Genetics, Volume 1, No. 1, 1967, pp. 65-71, doi: 10.1007/BF00487738
  • Distinguishing homologous from Analogous proteins. In: Systematic Biology, Volume 19, No. 2, 1970, pp. 99-113 doi: 10.2307/2412448
  • Toward 's defining the course of evolution: minimum change for a specified tree topology. In: Systematic Zoology. Volume 20, No. 4, 1971, pp. 406-416 Abstract, Full text ( PDF; 395 kB)
  • The molecular evolution of cytochrome c in eukaryotes. In: Journal of Molecular Evolution, Volume 8, No. 1, 1976, pp. 13-40, doi: 10.1007/BF01738880
  • Homology: a personal view on some of the problems. Review article in: Trends in Genetics, Volume 16, No. 5, 2000, pp. 227-231, doi: 10.1016/S0168-9525 (00) 02005-9
  • Evolution Is a Fact. In: Joel Cracraft and Rodger W. Bybee (ed.): Evolutionary Science and Society: Educating a New Generation. Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, Colorado Springs 2005, pp. 22, ISBN 1-929614-23-3, full text of Evolutionary Science and Society ... (PDF, 5.5 MB)
Phylogenetics Science (journal) Digital Object Identifier
811812
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