Leigh Van Valen
American biologist
Leigh Van Valen's AcademicInfluence.com Rankings
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Biology
Leigh Van Valen's Degrees
- PhD Biology Columbia University
Why Is Leigh Van Valen Influential?
(Suggest an Edit or Addition)According to Wikipedia, Leigh Van Valen was a U.S. evolutionary biologist. At the time of his death, he was professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. Research and interests Amongst other work, Van Valen's proposed "Law of Extinction", known as Van Valen's law, drew upon the apparent constant probability of extinction in families of related organisms, based on data compiled from existing literature on the duration of tens of thousands of genera throughout the fossil record. Van Valen proposed the Red Queen Hypothesis , as an explanatory tangent to the Law of Extinction. The Red Queen Hypothesis captures the idea that there is a constant 'arms race' between co-evolving species. Its name is a reference to the Red Queen's race in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, in which the chess board moves such that Alice must continue running just to stay in the same place.
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