Talk:W. D. Hamilton

Opening sentence

The opening sentence sounds like Richard Dawkins' opinion is important in assessing someone's contribution to evolutionary biology, but Hamilton's scientific achievements dwarf those of Dawkins (and I am no Dawkins basher). Rewrite? 129.215.91.27 (talk) 14:46, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Malaria

Elsewhere Hamilton's death is said to be due to malaria, yet I don't see that word anywhere here. Shouldn't it be? The average person, me included, isn't going to recognize that long list of damage to his body as being from malaria. - Dougher (talk) 04:18, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Untitled

Thanks Duncharris, this page now looks like a true memorial. Great research. I especially liked the poetic bit from his will. A world away from the stub that i started as an anonymous contributor. Shyamal 04:35, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

postscript

I'm confused by the postscript... his [obituary in The Guardian] refers to his wish to be decomposed by beetles as a "fantasy," but the article seems to imply that it was actually carried out. It also seems contradictory since it says he was interred in Wytham Woods but his "directions" refer to a location in Brazil. Delmonte 16:47, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Hamilton's Rule (last paragraph)

Well, for starters Homoptera and Isoptera aren't haplodiploid and I'm not too sure about the rest of the paragraph either! I'll re-write the paragraph once I gather my facts and find the time! Shayno 20:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Update: Shayno 19:35, 1 November 2006 (UTC): Removed the mention of aphids and termites. I wrote something longer explaining eusociality in termites but it got a little technical, to the point where it was out of place on a biography page. I'll go spend my efforts on the Eusociality article!

British academic jargon

The article states, "Working through the stodgy prose, Hamilton later blamed Fisher's book for only getting 2:1 degree." Would someone be able to clarify this? From the context, I gather that a "2:1 degree" is somehow inferior to something else that a student might get, but I'm not sure. Also, does it mean that the "blame" arose because the book was hard to understand, or because Hamilton spent so much time on it that he neglected his regular coursework? Thanks for any help you can give! JamesMLane t c 13:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Added a link to British undergraduate degree classification to explain 2:1 degree. Shayno 10:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

AIDS and HIV

As far as I can tell from 1 minute of dedicated and painstaking research, Hamilton's views on AIDS are emphatically not that AIDS is not caused by HIV. Perhaps this should be explicitly stated, as until now that was the only controversial theory of AIDS I had heard of...

ie We could say "the origin of the HIV virus" rather than "the origin of the AIDS epidemic" lay in oral polio vaccines... Evercat 23:17, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Erdos Number

William Hamilton does not have an Erdos number according to the link on the Wikipedia page. Can someone who knows more about this topic than I do fix this?

Caveman1949 (talk) 22:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

This is his path to Erdős: William D. Hamilton coauthored with Robert M. May, Robert M. May coauthored with Yoh Iwasa, Yoh Iwasa coauthored with Eugene Seneta, Eugene Seneta coauthored with Janos Galambos, Janos Galambos coauthored with Paul Erdős. I've added it as a footnote. --Robin (talk) 23:50, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

BBC Radio 4 Great Lives

He was featured on this programme http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qc2hn (on Tue 2 Feb 2010). It mentioned that he was married and had 3 children. I do not know how to include this information in the main page - could someone update this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.76.73 (talk) 21:11, 2 February 2010 (UTC)