Martin Nowak

Martin Nowak is fascinated by all questions of mathematical biology and regrets that he can work only on some. He initiated the field of virus dynamics which is the mathematical study of virus infections. He contributed to the long-standing problem of evolution of cooperation by introducing spatial games, generous tit-for-tat, win-stay, lose-shift and indirect reciprocity. He summarized all approaches to evolution of cooperation into five mechanisms . In an effort to describe the evolution of human language, he designed a mathematical approach bringing together formal linguistics, learning theory, and evolutionary dynamics. He invented evolutionary graph theory as a general approach to study the effect of population structure on evolution. He studies the evolutionary dynamics of cancer initiation, progression and treatment. He has contributed to the dialog between science and religion.