The Art of the State: Modelling the Endpoints of Evolution by Natural Selection – John M. McNamara, Honorary Member, Inaugural academic Lecture

John M. McNamara is a leading theoretical biologist and professor emeritus at Bristol University. His main research interests are in the adaptation of organisms to their environment and to each other’s behaviour and the development of efficient mathematical approaches and behavioural models using principles from life-history evolution and energy allocation. His theoretical work spans different evolutionary domains: evolutionary game theory, optimal decision-making, information use and stochastic state-dependent modelling in decision-making. In his models, he investigates how a fluctuating environment affects fitness in the Darwinian sense.

John M. McNamara
(Click on the photo to see a gallery of images from the academic keynote lecture)
Photo: Tamás Szigeti / mta.hu

In 2008, he was awarded the Hamilton Prize, the highest honour of the International Society for Behavioural Ecology, together with Professor Alasdair Houston, and in 2018 he was awarded the Sewall Wright Prize by the American Society of Naturalists, the world’s first scientific society for ecology, evolutionary biology and behavioural ecology. Professor McNamara has lectured several times in Hungary and conducts collaborative research with Hungarian researchers.