Erik Rauch (May 15, 1974 – July 13, 2005) was an American

biophysicist Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study Biology, biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from Molecule, molecular to organismic ...

and

theoretical ecologist Theoretical ecology is the scientific discipline devoted to the study of ecological systems using theoretical methods such as simple conceptual models, mathematical models, computational simulations, and advanced data analysis. Effective models im ...

who worked at NECSI,

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

Santa Fe Institute The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, includ ...

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, and other institutions. Rauch's most notable paper was published in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'' and concerned the

mathematical model A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used in the natural sciences (such as physics, ...

ing of the conservation of

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

Biography

He received a B.S. in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

and

Mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

from

in May 1996, where he was the technician for campus humor magazine ''

The Yale Record ''The Yale Record'' is the campus humor magazine of Yale University. Founded in 1872, it became the oldest humor magazine in the world when ''Punch'' folded in 2002."History", The Yale Record, March 10, 2010. http://www.yalerecord.com/about/histo ...

''. His undergraduate thesis was "The Geometry of Critical Ising Clusters", under the direction of

Benoit Mandelbrot Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of phy ...

, the inventor of

fractal geometry In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illus ...

. He then worked at the IBM Watson Research Center in the theoretical physics department, and began graduate study at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1996. He received his PhD from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 2004 under the direction of

Gerald Sussman Gerald Jay Sussman (born February 8, 1947) is the Panasonic Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his S.B. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from MIT in 1968 and 1973 respectively. He ...

: his thesis topic was " Diversity of Evolving Systems: Scaling and Dynamics of Genealogical Trees " He then joined the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at

as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of

Simon A. Levin Simon Asher Levin (born April 22, 1941) is an American ecologist and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the director of the Center for BioComplexity at Princeton University. He spec ...

, the Moffett professor of biology in 2005, and was in that position at his early death. His hobby of collecting place names led Rauch to found

MetaCarta MetaCarta is a software company that developed one of the first search engines to use a map to find unstructured data, unstructured documents. The product uses natural language processing to georeference text for customers in Defense industry, de ...

with John Frank and Doug Brenhouse. Using MetaCarta's software, Rauch developed maps like the four below for fun. Rauch was an inventor of spatial information processing systems. He founded several organizations, including * ALife * TerraShare *

He proposed an approach for car-free neighbourhoods to the zoning board of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died in a hiking accident in California's

Sequoia National Park Sequoia National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada (U.S.), Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California. The park was established on September 25, 1890, and today protects of forested mountainous terrain. Encompassing ...

at age 31.

Published works related to biological diversity

* * * * * * * * *

References

Diversity is unevenly distributed within species
an informal presentation of the results in the above paper (Nature 431, 449–452)
Erik Rauch
��Mathematics Genealogy Project.

Gallery

Image:Erik-Rauch-MetaCarta-map-of-vin.png, MetaCarta query for "vin" shows the outline of France Image:Erik-Rauch-MetaCarta-map-of-vino.png, MetaCarta query for "vino" shows the outline of Italy Image:Erik-Rauch-MetaCarta-map-of-wein.png, MetaCarta query for "wein" shows the outline of Germany Image:Erik-Rauch-MetaCarta-map-of-consonant-clusters.gif, Scatter plot of consonant pairings in place names showing the distribution of linguistic influences

External links

at Stanford
www.erikrauch.org
A snapshot of the web surrounding Rauch's original webpage. , many of the papers could be read from their original servers linked fro
Erik's primary home page at MIT.

no violence period
Rauch's compilation of "Unconventional Pro-Life Perspectives on Abortion and the Right to Life" * Available through AIP
Long-range interactions and evolutionary stability in a predator-prey system

MetaCarta
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rauch, Erik 1974 births 2005 deaths Accidental deaths in California Mathematical ecologists Santa Fe Institute people