Prof. Stearns specializes in life history evolution, which links the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology, in evolutionary medicine, and in evolutionary functional genomics. He came to Yale in 2000 from the University of Basel, Switzerland, where he had been professor of zoology since 1983 and held several administrative posts. His books include "Evolution, an introduction" (Oxford, 2000) with Rolf Hoekstra, "Watching, from the Edge of Extinction" (Yale, 1999) with his wife Beverly Peterson Stearns, "The Evolution of Life Histories" (Oxford, 1992), and two edited volumes, "Evolution in health and disease" (Oxford, 1998) and "The Evolution of Sex and its Consequences."

A 1967 graduate of Yale College, Stearns earned a M.S. from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia.

Prof. Stearns founded and has served as president of both the European Society for Evolutionary Biology and the Tropical Biology Association and was founding editor of the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. He has been a vice president of the Society for the Study of Evolution and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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