Wen-Hsiung Li
Wen-Hsiung Li is a Taiwanese-American scientist working in the fields of molecular evolution, population genetics, and genomics. He is currently the James Watson Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Information Science and Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
Biography
Li was born in 1942 in Taiwan. In 1968, he received a M.S. in geophysics from National Central University. In 1972, he received his Ph.D. in applied mathematics at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. From 1972 to 1973, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin Madison, working with James F. Crow. In 1973, he moved to the University of Texas, where he was appointed as a professor in 1984. Since 1998, he has been a professor at the University of Chicago.Scientific contributions
Li is best known for his studies on the molecular clock and on the patterns and consequences of gene duplication.In 2003, he received the international Balzan Prize for his contribution to genetics and evolutionary biology, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, who cited his role in "establishing theoretical foundations for molecular phylogenetics and evolutionary genomics". He is the author of the first textbook in the field of molecular evolution, Molecular Evolution and Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution, and an author on more than 200 peer-reviewed publications.
Honors
- Academician, Academia Sinica Taiwan, 1998
- Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999
- President of the “Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution”, 2000
- Member, National Academy of Sciences, 2003
- Balzan Prize 2003 for genetics and evolution and John Maynard Smith ).
- Inaugural Chen Award for Achievement in Human Genetic and Genomic Research, Human Genome Organisation, 2008
- 2019 SMBE Motoo Kimura Lifetime Contribution Award