Motoo Kimura Totally Explained

Everything about Motoo Kimura totally explained

Motoo Kimura (木村資生 Kimura Motoo), (November 13, 1924 - November 13, 1994) was a Japanese biologist best known for introducing the neutral theory of molecular evolution in 1968. He became one of the most influential theoretical population geneticists. He is remembered in genetics for his innovative use of diffusion equations to calculate the probability of fixation in time to fixation of beneficial, deleterious, or neutral alleles. Combining theoretical population genetics with molecular evolution data, he also developed the neutral theory of molecular evolution in which genetic drift is the main force changing allele frequencies. James F. Crow, himself a renowned population geneticist, considers Kimura to be one of the two greatest evolutionary geneticists, along with Gustave Malécot, after the great trio of the modern synthesis (Haldane, Wright, Fisher).

Life and work

Kimura was born in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture. From an early age he was very interested in botany, though he also excelled at mathematics (teaching himself geometry and other maths during a lengthy convalescence due to food poisoning). After entering a selective high school in Nagoya, Kimura focused on plant morphology and cytology; he worked in the laboratory of M. Kumazawa studying the chromosome structure of lilies. With Kumazawa, he also discovered how to connect his interests in botany and mathematics: biometry.
   Due to World War II, Kimura left high school early to enter Kyoto Imperial University in 1944. On the advice of the prominent geneticist Hitoshi Kihara, Kimura entered the botany program rather than cytology because the former, in the Faculty of Science rather than Agriculture, allowed him to avoid military duty. He joined Kihara's laboratory after the war, where he studied the introduction of foreign chromosomes into plants and learned the foundations of population genetics. In 1949, Kimura joined the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima. In 1953 he published his first population genetics paper (which would eventually be very influential), describing a "stepping stone" model for population structure that could treat more complex patterns of immigration than Sewall Wright's earlier "island model". After meeting visiting American geneticist Duncan McDonald (part of Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission), Kimura arranged to enter graduate school at Iowa State College in summer 1953 to study with J. L. Lush.. The field of molecular biology was expanding rapidly, and there was growing tension between advocates of the expanding reductionist field and scientists in organismal biology, the traditional domain of evolution. The neutral theory was immediately controversial, receiving support from many molecular biologists and attracting opposition from many evolutionary biologists (though with plenty of divergence from this pattern on both sides, especially among those who studied the theory seriously).
   Kimura would spend most of the rest of his life developing and defending the neutral theory. As James F. Crow put it, "much of Kimura's early work turned out to be pre-adapted for use in the quantitative study of neutral evolution."
   In 1992, Kimura received the Darwin Medal from the Royal Society, and the following year he was made a Foreign Member. He was married to Hiroko Kimura. They had one child, a son, Akio, and had a granddaughter, Hanako.

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