Martin Nowak

Martin Nowak
Martin Andreas Nowak (born April 7, 1965) is an Austrian-born professor of mathematics and biology at Harvard University. He is one of the leading researchers in the field of mathematical biology. He made contributions to the theory of evolution, cooperation, virus dynamics, and cancer dynamics. Nowak held professorships at Oxford University and at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, before being recruited by Harvard in 2003. He was the director of Harvard's program for evolutionary dynamics from 2003 until 2020. He is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.
Nowak has authored more than 500 academic papers and has been cited more than 140,000 times. In addition, Nowak has authored four books, who have received critical praise. Nowak's best known work outside of academia is his 2011 book SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. Another work, Evolution, Games, and God, explores the interplay between theology and evolutionary theology. Nowak, a Roman Catholic, frequently lectures about religion and was co-director with Sarah Coakley of the Evolution and Theology of Cooperation project at Harvard University.
Early life and education
Nowak was born April 7, 1965 in Vienna, Austria. He studied at Albertus Magnus Gymnasium and the University of Vienna, earning a doctorate in biochemistry and mathematics in 1989. He worked with Peter Schuster on quasi-species theory and with Karl Sigmund on evolution of cooperation. Nowak received the highest Austrian honors (Sub auspiciis Praesidentis) when awarded his degree.
Career
From 1989 to 1998, Nowak worked at the University of Oxford with Robert May as an Erwin Schrödinger postdoctoral Scholar and Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. From 1997 to 1998, Nowak was a professor of mathematical biology. After 1998, he conducted research at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and established a program in theoretical biology.
In 2003, Nowak was recruited to Harvard University as Professor of Mathematics and Biology. When Harvard received a large donation for the founding of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED), he was appointed its director. Scientific American reported that Nowak's team received US$6.5 million initially, with nothing released to him after 2007, a couple of hundred thousand dollars remained unspent.
Nowak has authored books and scientific papers on topics in evolutionary game theory, cancer, viruses, infectious disease, the evolution of language, and the evolution of cooperation.
His first book, Virus Dynamics (written with Robert May) was published by Oxford University Press in 2001. Nowak is a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He won the Weldon Memorial Prize, the Albert Wander Prize, the Akira Okubo Prize, the David Starr Jordan Prize and the Henry Dale Prize. Nowak's 2006 book Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life earned him praise from other scientists along with the R.R. Hawkins Award for the Outstanding Professional, Reference or Scholarly Work of 2006 from the Association of American Publishers.
Nowak was co-director with Sarah Coakley of the Evolution and Theology of Cooperation project at Harvard University, sponsored by the Templeton Foundation. where he was also a member of their Board of Advisers. In a lecture given at Harvard in March 2007 called "Evolution and Christianity", Nowak, a Roman Catholic, argued that "Science and religion are two essential components in the search for truth. Denying either is a barren approach."
A report commissioned by the university found that Nowak allowed Epstein to visit the PED offices more than 40 times after his conviction, to maintain an office with a phone line and webpage, and to interact with students at PED. In 2021, Harvard decided a proportionate response to the severity of Nowak's failure to follow Harvard policies was to close the institute founded with Epstein's money, to donate the money remaining to a foundation helping victims of sexual assaults. His interaction with students was also limited.
Academic research
In 1990, Nowak and Robert May proposed a mathematical model which explained the puzzling delay between HIV infection and AIDS in terms of the evolution of different strains of the virus during individual infections, to the point where the genetic diversity of the virus reaches a threshold whereby the immune system can no longer control it. This detailed quantitative approach depended on assumptions about the biology of HIV which were subsequently confirmed by experiment.
In a paper in Science in 2006, Nowak enunciated and unified the mathematical rules for the five understood bases of the evolution of cooperation (kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection). Nowak suggests that evolution is constructive because of cooperation, and that we might add “natural cooperation” as a third fundamental principle of evolution beside mutation and natural selection.
In a paper featured on the front cover of Nature in 2007, Nowak and colleagues demonstrated that the transition of irregular verbs to regular verbs in English over time obeys a simple inverse-square law, thus providing one of the first quantitative laws in the evolution of language.
In 2010 a paper by Nowak, E. O. Wilson, and Corina Tarnita, in Nature, argued that standard natural selection theory represents a simpler and superior approach to kin selection theory in the evolution of eusociality. This work has led to many comments including strong criticism from proponents of inclusive fitness theory. Nowak maintains that the findings of the paper are conclusive and that the field of social evolution should move beyond inclusive fitness theory.
He has over 300 scientific publications, of which 40 are in Nature and 15 in Science.
Nowak's research interests include:
Somatic evolution of cancer, genetic instability, tumor suppressor genes
Stem cells, tissue architecture
Viruses, infectious diseases, immunology
Dynamics of prion infections
Quasispecies
Genetic redundancy
Evolution of language
Evolutionary game theory
Evolutionary graph theory
Evolution of cooperation
Prelife and origins of life
'Supercooperators'
In 2011, Nowak’s book Supercooperators: The Mathematics of Evolution, Altruism and Human Behaviour (Or, Why We Need Each Other to Succeed) was published, co-authored with Roger Highfield.
This book is partly an autobiography and partly a popular presentation of his work in mathematical biology on the evolution of cooperation, the origin of life and the evolution of language.
In the book, Nowak argues that cooperation is the third fundamental principle of evolution next to mutation and selection. Nowak writes extensively about his collaborators and mentors over the years, including his PhD advisor Karl Sigmund and his postdoctoral advisor Robert May; the book is dedicated "To Karl and Bob".
The book is inspired from academic lectures given by Nowak. In particular, the five rules for the evolution of cooperation were first presented at a lecture given in Oxford in 2006. Other topics were covered at the Templeton lectures, delivered in 2010 at Johns Hopkins University.
Nowak argues that natural selection opposes cooperation unless certain mechanisms favour cooperation over defection. He distinguishes five such mechanisms: direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, spatial selection, group selection and kin selection. Direct reciprocity is based on repeated interactions: people help those who help them. Indirect reciprocity uses reputation: people help those who help others. Spatial selection enable cliques of cooperators to thrive: people help their friends. Group selection recognizes that competition between groups can favour more cooperative groups, while competition within groups opposes cooperation. Kin selection can establish cooperation between close genetic relatives. Nowak holds that kin selection is a valid mechanism for evolution of cooperation, although the concepts of inclusive fitness and Hamilton's rule are misleading.
SuperCooperators talks about Nowak's theory of prelife which posits that mutation, selection and cooperation preceded reproduction and led to the origin of life. The book discusses Nowak's work on the evolution of language, which he began with David Krakauer, who was his postdoc in Oxford and Princeton, and continued with Partha Niyogi and Natalia Komarova. In SuperCooperators, Nowak also argues that punishment is not a useful tool for promoting cooperation. The idea that "Winners don't punish" is based on collaboration with Anna Dreber, Drew Fudenberg and David Rand. The book discusses cooperation among cells and cancer as a breakdown of such cooperation.
Supercooperators includes autobiographical elements. Nowak writes about his love for the music of Gustav Mahler and the works of Goethe. Each chapter begins with a quote from classic literature, including quotes by Shakespeare, Ovid, Goethe and George Orwell.
Reviews of Supercooperators
Supercooperators has attracted many positive reviews.
Oren Harman wrote in the New York Times that “Nowak [...] has devoted a brilliant career to show that Darwin, and particularily his followers, batted two for three.", since Nowak had proposed that cooperationm should be regarded as a third fundamental principle of evolution beside mutation and selection.
Manfred Milinski in Nature describes the book as "part autobiography, part textbook, and reads like a best-selling novel" and suggests that whereas Nowak is right that the theories of kin selection and punishment need revisiting, it is too soon to tell whether his bold ideas will hold up to empirical testing. On the Nowak/Tarnita/Wilson paper Milinski says: "I anticipate that a better mathematical formulation of social evolution theory will be found that includes relatedness, is compatible with existing evidence and includes Hamilton's rule as a rule of thumb."
David Willetts, in the Financial Times, described the book as an "excellent example" of using the nexus of evolutionary biology, game theory and neuroscience to understand the development of cooperation in society, and suggests that "all politicians can draw inspiration and ideas from the intellectual resources of this exciting approach"
References
External links
Martin Nowak: Extended film interview with transcript for the 'Why Are We Here?' documentary series.
1965 births
Christian scholars
Living people
Fellows of Wolfson College, Oxford
Evolutionary biologists
University of Vienna alumni
Harvard University faculty
Austrian Roman Catholics
Theistic evolutionists
Austrian mathematicians
Austrian biochemists