Jump to content

Lloyd Demetrius

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Hasperasperagus (talk | contribs) at 13:10, 23 May 2022 (references added). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Lloyd Demetrius
Lloyd Demetrius in 2015
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge
University of Chicago
Known forEvolutionary entropy and Directionality Theory
Scientific career
FieldsMathematician and theoretical biologist
InstitutionsHarvard UniversityMax-Planck-Institute

Lloyd A. Demetrius is an American mathematician and theoretical biologist at the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary biology, Harvard University.[1] He is best known for the discovery of the concept, evolutionary entropy,[2] a statistical parameter that characterizes Darwinian fitness in models of evolutionary processes at various levels of biological organization – molecular, organismic and social. Evolutionary entropy, a generalization of the Gibbs-Boltzmann entropy in statistical thermodynamics, is the cornerstone of directionality theory, an analytical study of evolution by variation and selection.[3][4][5][6] The theory has applications to: a) the development of aging and the evolution of longevity;[7][8] b) the origin and progression of age related diseases such as cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease;[9][10] c) the evolution of cooperation and the spread of inequality[11][12].

Education

Born in Jamaica, he carried out his undergraduate studies in mathematics at the University of Cambridge, UK. He received his PhD in mathematical biology from the University of Chicago in 1967. He was then a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley.

Career

Demetrius was a faculty member in a number of mathematics departments in the US from 1969–1979: the University of California, Berkeley; Brown University; Rutgers University; and a research scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen (1980–1989) and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin. Since 1990, he has been with the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, first as a visiting professor (1990–1992), and then as an associate in population genetics. He has held visiting professorships at MIT, University of Paris, and was an occupant of a Chaire Municipale, a distinguished visiting professorship at the University of Grenoble. His research includes the application of ergodic theory and the theory of dynamical systems to the study of evolutionary processes in biological and socio-economic systems. He has also pioneered the application of the methodology of quantum mechanics to the study of allometric relations between metabolic rate and generation time in cells. This work is the mathematical basis for the analysis of cancer and neurodegenerative disorders as metabolic and bioenergetic diseases.


See also

References

  1. ^ "Lloyd Demetrius". Hwpi.harvard.edu.
  2. ^ "Physics Reports | Boltzmann, Darwin and Directionality Theory | ScienceDirect.com by Elsevier". Sciencedirect.com.
  3. ^ Demetrius, Lloyd; Gundlach, Volker (2014). "Directionality Theory and the Entropic Principle of Natural Selection". Entropy. 16 (10): 5428–5522. Bibcode:2014Entrp..16.5428D. doi:10.3390/e16105428.
  4. ^ {{Cite journal|doi = 10.1214/aoap/1177004975|doi-access = free|title = Evolutionary Formalism for Products of Positive Random Matrices|year = 1994|last1 = Arnold|first1 = Ludwig|last2 = Gundlach|first2 = Matthias|last3 = Demetrius|first3 = Lloyd|journal = Ann. Appl. Probab.|volume = 4|issue = 3|pages = 859-901
  5. ^ {{Cite journal|doi = 10.1016/j.physa.2022.127325|doi-access = free|title = Directionality theory and the second law of thermodynamics|year = 2022|last1 = Demetrius|first1 = Lloyd|last2 = Wolf|first2 = Christian|journal = Physica A|volume = 598|
  6. ^ Dietz, Klaus (2005). "Darwinian fitness, evolutionary entropy and directionality theory". BioEssays. 27 (11): 1097–1101. doi:10.1002/bies.20317. PMID 16237668.
  7. ^ Lloyd Demetrius. "Caloric Restriction, Metabolic Rate, and Entropy". Biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org. Retrieved October 27, 2021.
  8. ^ Shaw, Jonathan (November 1, 2004). "A New Theory on Longevity". Harvard Magazine.
  9. ^ Müller-Jung, Joachim. "Das Streitgespräch: Alzheimer: Heilung – wie nah ist man wirklich dran?". Faz.net.
  10. ^ "A new understanding of Alzheimer's". News.harvard.edu. February 25, 2015.
  11. ^ Dietz, Klaus (2005). "Darwinian fitness, evolutionary entropy and directionality theory". BioEssays. 27 (11): 1097–1101. doi:10.1002/bies.20317. PMID 16237668.
  12. ^ {{Cite journal|doi = 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.03.017|doi-access = free|title = Entropy, directionality theory and the evolution of income inequality|year = 2022|last1 = Fabrizio|first1 = Germano|journal = Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization|volume = 198|pages = 15 - 43

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lloyd_Demetrius&oldid=1089380323"