WD (Bill) Hamilton

Scope for recognizing and accommodating exceptional individuals has been diminishing in British universities ever since. Hamilton published relatively few papers, in generally low status journals, and gained only a handful of grants much later in life. Bureaucratic measures of performance are increasingly important and judge the impact of an article only by the journal it is published in. This seriously undervalues radical originality, which although extremely rare is utterly vital to science. It is disturbing that a young Bill Hamilton today would probably find an academic career even more difficult to pursue.

Alan Grafen, in his obituary of Bill Hamilton (Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. Lond. 50, 109–132 (2004)).

I post this excerpt following a discussion with somebody who had never heard of him. Hamilton’s enormous contributions to biology are not well known. You also have to wonder if the lack of a Nobel for biology diminishes medicine in the long run. Some things do indeed get worse.

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