John Maynard Smith
John Maynard Smith
John Maynard Smith FRSwas a British theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J. B. S. Haldane. Maynard Smith was instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution and theorised on other problems such as the evolution of sex and signalling theory...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth6 January 1920
John Maynard Smith quotes about
thinking games levels
Evolutionary game theory is a way of thinking about evolution at the phenotypic level when the fitnesses of particular phenotypes depend on their frequencies in the population.
thinking years people
As an evolutionary biologist, I have learned over the years that most people do not want to see themselves as lumbering robots programmed to ensure the survival of their genes. I don't think they will want to see themselves as digital computers either. To be told by someone with impeccable scientific credentials that they are nothing of the kind can only be pleasing.
believe suffering i-can
I can't go around believing in a God that believes suffering is good for me.
games fields biology
Paradoxically, it has turned out that game theory is more readily applied to biology than to the field of economic behavior for which it was originally designed