Paper: William D. Hamilton’s Work in Evolutionary Game Theory

Abstract

William D. Hamilton’s impact on contemporary views of evolution has been nothing short of revolutionary, and his contributions to our reasoning on kin selection, genomic conflicts, parasitism and costs of sex dominate these fields. He also had an important, if somewhat less obvious, influence on evolutionary game theory. This field, which by now is well-established both in biology and economics, is usually (and rightly) attributed to John Maynard Smith: the canonical references are his brief joint paper with George Price, and his book ‘Evolution and the Theory of Games’. But W.D. Hamilton played an important, and indeed pioneering role in the development of this field.

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Related papers:

“The Evolution of Cooperation”

“Extraordinary sex ratios. A sex-ratio theory for sex linkage and inbreeding has new implications in cytogenetics and entomology”

Related books:

The Selfish Gene

Evolution and the Theory of Games

The Evolution of Cooperation

Related Stanford course: Robert Sapolsky: Human Behavioral Biology – Spring 2010