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Information about Robert Trivers

Robert L. Trivers, (born 19 February 1943, pronounced IPA: /ˈtrɪvɚz/) is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist, most noted for proposing the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), and parent-offspring conflict (1974). Other areas in which he has made influential contributions include an adaptive view of self-deception (first described in 1976) and intragenomic conflict. Along with George C. Williams, Trivers is arguably one of the most influential evolutionary theorists alive today.

A 1961 graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover, Trivers went to Harvard to study mathematics, but wound up studying U.S. history in preparation to become a lawyer. He took a psychology class after suffering a breakdown, and was very unimpressed with the state of psychology. He was prevented from getting into Yale law school by his breakdown, and wound up with a job writing social science textbooks for children (never published, due in part to presenting evolution by natural selection as fact). This exposure to evolutionary theory led him to graduate work with Ernst Mayr at Harvard 1968-1972 (he never got a bachelor's degree anywhere). He was on faculty at Harvard 1973-1978, then moved to UC Santa Cruz.

He met Huey P. Newton, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, in 1978 when Newton applied (while in prison) to do a reading course with him as part of a graduate degree in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz. Trivers and Newton became close friends, Newton was godfather to one of Trivers' daughters. Trivers joined the Black Panther Party in 1979. Trivers and Newton published an analysis of the role of self-deception by the flight crew in the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 (Trivers, R.L. & Newton, H.P. Science Digest 'The crash of flight 90: doomed by self-deception?' November 1982, pp 66,67,111).

Trivers was a faculty member at UC Santa Cruz 1978-1994. He is currently a Rutgers University notable faculty member.

He wrote the original forward to Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and was recently awarded the 2007 Crafoord Prize in Biosciences for "his fundamental analysis of social evolution, conflict and cooperation"[1][2].

Significant papers

  • Trivers, R. L. (1971) The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35-57.
  • Trivers, R. L. (1972) Parental investment and sexual selection. In B. Campbell (Ed.) Sexual selection and the descent of man, 1871-1971 (pp 136-179). Chicago, Aldine.
  • Trivers R.L. & Willard, D. E. (1973) Natural selection of parental ability to vary the sex ratio of offspring. Science, 179(68), 90-2. pubmed
  • Trivers, R. L. (1974). Parent-offspring conflict. American Zoologist, 14, 249-264.
  • Trivers, R. L. & Hare R. (1976) Haplodiploidy and the evolution of the social insects. Science, 191(4224), 250-263. pubmed
  • Trivers, R. L. (1991) Deceit and self-deception: The relationship between communication and consciousness. In: M. Robinson and L. Tiger (eds.) Man and Beast Revisited, Smithsonian, Washington, DC, pp. 175-191.

Books

  • Trivers, R. L. (1985) Social Evolution. Benjamin/Cummings, Menlo Park, CA.
  • Trivers, R. L. (2002) Natural Selection and Social Theory: Selected Papers of Robert L. Trivers. (Evolution and Cognition Series) Oxford University Press, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-513062-6
  • Burt, A. & Trivers, R. L. (2006) Genes in Conflict : The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements. Belknap Press, Harvard. ISBN 0-674-01713-7

References

1. ^ The Crafoord Prize in Biosciences 2007. The Crafoord Prize (website) (2007-01-18). Retrieved on .
2. ^ "Jamaican-born (sic) scientist gets top award", Jamaica Gleaner, 2007-01-29. Retrieved on 2007-01-29. 

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Evolutionary biology is a sub-field of biology concerned with the origin and descent of species, as well as their change, multiplication, and diversity over time.
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For the book by E. O. Wilson, see .


Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to explain social behavior in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages the behaviors may have.
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In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a form of altruism in which one organism provides a benefit to another without expecting any immediate payment or compensation. However, reciprocal altruism is not unconditional.
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In evolutionary biology, parental investment (PI) is any parental expenditure (time, energy etc.) that benefits one offspring at a cost to parents' ability to invest in other components of fitness (Clutton-Brock 1991: 9; Trivers 1972).
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Parent-offspring conflict is a term used to signify the evolutionary conflict arising from differences in optimal fitness of parents and their offspring. While parents tend to maximize the number of offspring, the offspring can increase their fitness by getting a greater share of
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Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument.

It has been argued that humans are, without exception, highly susceptible to self-deception, as everyone has emotional
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Intragenomic conflict arises when genes inside a genome are not transmitted by the same rules, or when a gene causes its own transmission to the detriment of the rest of the genome. (This last kind of gene is usually called selfish genetic element, or ultraselfish gene.
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Professor George Christopher Williams (b. May 12, 1926) is an American evolutionary biologist.

Williams is a professor emeritus of biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is best known for his vigorous critique of group selection.
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Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA and a member of the Ivy League.
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Psychology (from Greek: Literally "talk about the soul" (from logos)) is both an academic and applied discipline involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior.
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Ernst Walter Mayr (July 5, 1904, Kempten, Germany – February 3, 2005, Bedford, Massachusetts U.S.), was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist.
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University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university, one of the ten campuses of the University of California.
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Huey Percy Newton (February 17, 1942 – August 22, 1989), was co-founder and leader of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, a black internationalist/racial equality organization that began in October 1966.
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Black Panther Party (originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an African American organization founded to promote civil rights and self-defense. It was active within the United States in the late 1960s into the 1970s.
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The History of Consciousness program is an interdisciplinary graduate program in the humanities with links to the sciences, social sciences, and arts at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
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University of California, Santa Cruz, also known as UC Santa Cruz or UCSC, is a public, collegiate university, one of the ten campuses of the University of California.
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Self-deception is a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument.

It has been argued that humans are, without exception, highly susceptible to self-deception, as everyone has emotional
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Air Florida Flight 90
Salvage operations on January 19, 1982 of the wreckage
Summary
Date  January 13, 1982
Cause  Icing and pilot error
Site  Washington, D.C.
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Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (also known as Rutgers University), is the largest institution for higher education in the state of New Jersey. The eighth-oldest college established in the United States, Rutgers was originally chartered as Queen's College
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Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins lecturing on his book, The God Delusion.
Born March 26 1941 (1941--)
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The Crafoord Prize was established in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish industrialist, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord. Administered by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the aim of the prize is to reward and promote basic research in fields (chosen to complement those in
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Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals. The journal is peer-reviewed, is published weekly, and has a print subscriber base of around 130,000.
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Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals. The journal is peer-reviewed, is published weekly, and has a print subscriber base of around 130,000.
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The Gleaner Company, established in 1834 by Joshua and Jacob deCordova, is a newspaper publishing enterprise in Jamaica. Its best-known product is the Daily Gleaner first published 13 September,1834, a morning broadsheet published six days each week.
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