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Website(s)About William's Work
William Durham is an evolutionary biologist who works to integrate the fields of anthropology and biology.
After studying cultures in Latin America and West Africa, Durham formulated a theory that he calls “coevolution,” wherein the characteristics of various groups within a species are shaped by the interplay of genetics, environment, and (in humans) culture. His basic approach is to combine population biology and quantitative analytic methods, as well as genetics and evolutionary theory. His published works include Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (1979), and Coevolution: Genes, Culture and Human Diversity (1991). He is co-editor of The Social Causes of Environmental Destruction in Latin America (1995) and co-author of Voyage to Galapagos (2002), an educational CD-ROM. He has also written articles on cultural evolution and human aggression and serves as editor of the Annual Review of Anthropology.
Biography
Durham is the Bing Professor of Human Biology and the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki University Fellow of Anthropological Sciences at Stanford University. He began teaching at Stanford in 1977 and was the director of the Program in Human Biology (1992-1995).
Durham received a B.S. (1971) from Stanford University, and an M.S. (1973) and a Ph.D. (1977) from the University of Michigan.
Recent News
In 2003, William Durham co-founded the Center for Responsible Travel (CREST), and in 2011, he became co-director of the Costa-Rica/Stanford sustainability initiative (INOGO) in the south of that country.
Updated July 2015
Published on February 1, 1983
