Lee Altenberg is an American
theoretical biologist. He is on the faculty of the Departments of Information and Computer Sciences and of Mathematics at the
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. He is best known for his work that helped establish the
evolution of evolvability and modularity in the
genotype–phenotype map as areas of investigation in evolutionary biology,[2][3] for moving theoretical concepts between the fields of
evolutionary biology and
evolutionary computation,[4][5][6] and for his mathematical unification and generalization of
modifier gene models for the evolution of biological information transmission, putting under a single mathematical framework the evolution of mutation rates, recombination rates, sexual reproduction rates, and dispersal rates.[7][8]
Altenberg's research focuses on uncovering the mathematical relationships within the dynamics of biological evolution, and
evolutionary algorithms. He is particularly interested in higher order phenomena such as the evolution of
evolvability, the evolution of
genetic information transmission, and the evolution of the
genotype–phenotype map. His chief accomplishments have been (1) to unify the theory for the evolution of genetic systems (recombination and mutation rates) by embedding them in the space of inclusive inheritance, which includes spatial as well as cultural information, and (2) to develop the concept of the
variational properties of organisms as phenomena subject to evolutionary dynamics. This includes the discovery of mechanisms that lead to the evolution of
evolvability, and
modularity in the genotype–phenotype map.[16][7]
The mathematical inclusiveness of his theoretical work has made it applicable to problems in evolutionary computation.[8] His work on the evolution of biological information transmission has required development of new
spectral theorems for
linear operators, including a unification of reaction-diffusion theory predicting the evolution of slow dispersal with the Reduction Principle predictions for models of mutation, recombination and migration rate evolution.[17] He has applied spectral theory to understand the evolution of
mutational robustness.[18]
Altenberg introduced a number of concepts which have been adopted in several fields:
generalization of the Reduction Principle to infinite dimensional spaces, which unified reaction-diffusion models for the evolution of dispersal,[17] and has been applied to epidemic models.[27]
Chair of the Native Hawaiian Plant Society on Maui 2005-2007
Onipa`a Award in 2011,[34] conferred by the Hawai`i Chapter of the
Sierra Club, for his work in getting legislation passed to prevent
light pollution on
Maui,[30] and to preserve an endangered Hawaiian lowland dry forest habitat on Maui in perpetuity.[31]
^Nuño de la Rosa, Laura (2017). "Computing the Extended Synthesis: Mapping the Dynamics and Conceptual Structure of the Evolvability Research Front". Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution. 328 (5): 395–411.
doi:
10.1002/jez.b.22741.
PMID28488750.
S2CID22229072.
^
abRudolf Seising; Lee Altenberg (6 April 2018).
"Interview with Lee Altenberg, 2017: CIS Oral History Project"(Video). IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. Honolulu, Hawai`i: IEEE. Retrieved 16 September 2019. An interview with CIS member Lee Altenberg, recorded at the 2017 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI 2017). Interview by Rudolf Seising.
^Altenberg, Lee (1991). "Chaos from Linear Frequency-Dependent Selection". American Naturalist. 138 (1): 51–68.
doi:
10.1086/285204.
S2CID84389673.
^Altenberg, Lee (1984). A Generalization of Theory on the Evolution of Modifier Genes. Stanford University: University Microfilms. p. 237.
CiteSeerX10.1.1.187.5507.
^
abAltenberg, Lee (1994). "Evolving better representations through selective genome growth". Proceedings of the First IEEE Conference on Evolutionary Computation IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence ICEC-94. Vol. 1. pp. 182–187.
doi:
10.1109/ICEC.1994.350019.
ISBN0-7803-1899-4.
S2CID5140043.
^Altenberg, Lee (1994). Sebald, A.V. (ed.). Emergent phenomena in genetic programming. World Scientific Publishing. pp. 233–241.
ISBN9810218109.
^
abAltenberg, Lee (1995). "Genome growth and the evolution of the genotype–phenotype map". In Banzhaf, Wolfgang; Eeckman, Frank H. (eds.). Evolution and Biocomputation: Computational Models of Evolution. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 899. Berlin; New York:
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 205–259.
doi:
10.1007/3-540-59046-3_11.
ISBN978-3-540-59046-0.
S2CID10378755.