John Tyler Bonner

John Tyler Bonner is an emeritus professor, now lecturer with the rank of professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. He is a pioneer in the use of cellular slime molds to understand evolution and development over a career of 40 years.

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Career

He is the emeritus George M. Moffet professor at Princeton. He was trained at Harvard University between 1937 and 1947, aside from a stint in the United States Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1946. His PhD studies were interrupted by this stint in the Air Corps, so he completed his studies in an unusually short period of time. He soon joined the faculty of Princeton University, becoming the chairman of the Princeton Biology Department between 1966 and 1977.

He holds 3 honorary doctorates and is an American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow. He was made a National Academy of Sciences fellow in 1973.

He was a visiting scholar at the Indian Institute of Science in 1993 and the Indian Academy of Sciences in 1990. He has also been visiting faculty at Brooklyn College, Williams College and University College, London. He also was a Sheldon Travelling Fellow in 1941 in Panama and Cuba while in graduate school, a Rockefeller Traveling Fellow 1953 in Paris, France, and held Guggenheim Fellowships in 1958 and from 1971-1972 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He held an National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship in Cambridge, England in 1963. He also had Commonwealth Foundation Book Fund Fellowships in 1971 and between 1984 and in 1985 Edinburgh, Scotland and a Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation Book Fund Fellowship in 1978 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Author

He has written an array of books on developmental biology and evolution, many scientific papers, and has produced a number of works in biology. Some of his books include:

• The Cellular Slime Molds
• The Evolution of Complexity by Means of Natural Selection [Review]
• The Evolution of Culture in Animals
• Life Cycles
• Morphogenesis: an Essay on Development
• On Development: The Biology of Form
• Cells and Societies
• First Signals
• The Ideas of Biology
• Sixty Years of Biology
• Size and Cycle
• Why Size Matters: From Bacteria to Blue Whales

His autobiography, "Lives of a Biologist: Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science" won the 2002 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award.

Support for evolution

One of the earliest efforts to express support for evolution by scientists was organized Nobel Prize Winner German biologist Hermann J. Muller in 1966. Muller circulated the following petition entitled: "Is Biological Evolution a Principle of Nature that has been well established by Science?", in May of 1966.^[1] Bonner signed this manifesto, joining 176 other leading American biologists, including several Nobel Prize Winners.^[2]

Personal

He was born in 1920. He has 4 children. His wife is deceased. He has vacationed in Nova Scotia yearly for over 40 years.

Notes

References

• Lives of a Biologist: Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science, John Tyler Bonner, Harvard University Press, May 24, 2002, ISBN 0674007638

• On Growth and Form, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, John Tyler Bonner (editor), Cambridge University Press; Rei/Abridg edition, July 31, 1992, ISBN 0521437768

• Why Size Matters: From Bacteria to Blue Whales, John Tyler Bonner, Princeton University Press, September 13, 2006, ISBN 0691128502

• On Size and Life (Scientific American Library), Thomas McMahon, John Tyler Bonner, Scientific American Library, May 1985, ISBN 0716750007

• Sixty Years of Biology, John Tyler Bonner, Princeton University Press, July 8, 1996, ISBN 0691021309

• Size and Cycle: An Essay on the Structure of Biology, John Tyler Bonner, Princeton University Press, January 1966, ISBN 069108033X

• The Ideas of Biology, John Tyler Bonner, Dover Publications; New Ed edition, November 11, 2002, ISBN 0486424197

• The Evolution of Culture in Animals, John Tyler Bonner, Princeton University Press, May 1, 1983, ISBN 0691023735

• Evolution and Development (Life Sciences Research Report), John Tyler Bonner, Springer, February 1982, ISBN 0387113312

• Life Cycles, John Tyler Bonner, Princeton University Press; New Ed edition, April 3, 1995, ISBN 0691001510

• Cells and Societies, John Tyler Bonner, Princeton University Press, 1957, ASIN B000GP02EI

• The cellular slime molds (Investigations in the biological sciences), John Tyler Bonner, Princeton University Press, 1959, ASIN B0006AVVYS

• The Evolution of Complexity by Means of Natural Selection, John Tyler Bonner, Princeton Univ Press, October 1988, ISBN 0691084939

• First Signals: The Evolution of Multicellular Development., John Tyler Bonner, Princeton University Press, February 15, 2001, ISBN 0691070385

• The Ideas of Biology. With Drawings by Ann Cox. , John Tyler Bonner, Methuen (University Paperbacks), 1965, ASIN B000L5PVT4

• Morphogenesis An Essay on Development, John Tyler Bonner, #Princeton University Press, 1952, ASIN B000J0MOMS

• On Development: The Biology of Form (Commonwealth Fund Publications), John Tyler Bonner, Harvard University Press, January 1974, ISBN 0674634101

• The Scale of Nature: A Panoramic View of the Sciences, John Tyler Bonner (Author), Patricia Collins (Illustrator), Harper & Row, 1969, ASIN B000M1Q7EU

• Researches on cellular slime moulds: Selected papers of J.T. Bonner, John Tyler Bonner, Indian Academy of Sciences, 1991, ISBN 8185324107