Brian Goodwin - Biography

Biography

Brian Goodwin was born in Montreal, Canada in 1931. He studied biology at McGill University and then emigrated to the UK, under a Rhodes Scholarship for studying mathematics at Oxford. He got his PhD at the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Conrad Hal Waddington. He then moved to Sussex University until 1983 when he became a full professor at the Open University in Milton Keynes until retirement in 1992. He became a major figure in the early development of mathematical biology, along with other researchers. He was one of the attendants to the famous meetings that took place between 1965 and 1968 in Villa Serbelloni, hosted by the Rockefeller Foundation, under the topic "Towards a theoretical Biology". The workshop involved, among other key scientists, Conrad Waddington, Jack Cowan, Michael Conrad, Christopher Zeeman, Richard Lewontin, Robert Rosen, Stuart Kauffman, John Maynard Smith, René Thom and Lewis Wolpert. As a result of the conference talks and discussions, a four-volume proceedings of the event came out, becoming at the time a major reference in the area.

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