Montgomery W. Slatkin
University of California, Berkeley
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Primary Section: 27, Evolutionary Biology Secondary Section: 26, Genetics Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2014)
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Biosketch
Montgomery Slatkin is a Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of California at Berkeley. He is affiliated with the Center for Theoretical and Evolutionary Genomics and with the Graduate Program in Computational Biology. He is a theoretical population geneticist who has worked on mathematical models of geographically subdivided populations, population growth and quantitative genetics. Slatkin was born in Toronto, Ontario, and grew up in suburban Detroit. He received a SB in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966. He received a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 1970. His PhD supervisor was George F. Carrier. He was a postdoctoral researcher with Richard Lewontin at the University of Chicago for one year. He became a faculty member in the Department of Theoretical Biology at the University of Chicago in 1971. He moved a faculty position in the Department of Zoology at the University of Washington in 1977 and then to the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He has been president of the American Society of Naturalists and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science.
Research Interests
Montgomery Slatkin’s laboratory has been involved in research primarily on mathematical population genetics, but also on mathematical models in phylogenetics, epidemiology and ecology. The research in population genetics is in several areas. One is on models that account for geographic patterns in gene frequencies in natural populations. This research examines the balance achieved between gene flow, genetic drift and natural selection. Part of this work involves modeling the effects of recent range expansions on patterns of geographic variation. Another area of research is on models of polygenic characters and complex inherited diseases that have a polygenic basis, with particular emphasis on determining how important are epistatic interactions among genes. A third area of research is on interpreting DNA sequencies obtained from fossils and using those sequences to infer past episodes of admixture and natural selection. Slatkin’s group has been part of the Neanderthal Genome Consortium and has collaborated on the analysis of ancient DNA from other mammalian populations including polar bears, cave bears, mammoths and mastodons.
