Since the death of L. L. Cavalli-Sforza I’ve been thinking about the great scientists who have passed on. Last fall, I mentioned that Mel Green had died. There was a marginal personal connection there. I had the privilege to talk to Green at length about sundry issues, often nonscientific. He was someone who been doing science so long he had talked to Charles Davenport in the flesh (he was not complimentary of Davenport’s understanding of Mendelian principles). It was like engaging with a history book!

A few months before I emailed Cavalli-Sforza, I had sent a message on a lark to James F. Crow. It was really a rather random thing, I never thought that Crow would respond. But in fact he emailed me right back! And he answered 10 questions from me, as you can see below the fold. The truth is I probably wouldn’t have thought to try and get in touch with Cavalli-Sforza if it hadn’t been so easy with Crow.

If you are involved in population genetics you know who Crow is. No introduction needed. Some of the people he supervised, such as Joe Felsenstein, have gone on to transform evolutionary biology in their own turn.

Born in 1916, Crow’s scientific career spanned the emergence of population genetics as a mature field, to the discovery of the importance of DNA, to molecular evolution & genomics. He had a long collaboration with Motoo Kimura, the Japanese geneticist instrumental in pushing forward the development of “neutral theory.”

He died in 2012.

Below are the questions I asked 12 years ago. My interests have changed somewhat, so it’s interesting to see what I was curious about back then. And of course fascinating to read Crow’s responses.
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