Godfrey Matthew Hewitt (10 January 1940 – 18 February 2013) was a British professor and evolutionary geneticist at the

University of East Anglia The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution f ...

who was very influential in the development of the fields of

molecular ecology Molecular ecology is a field of evolutionary biology that is concerned with applying molecular population genetics, molecular phylogenetics, and more recently genomics to traditional ecological questions (e.g., species diagnosis, conservation and ...

phylogeography Phylogeography is the study of the historical processes that may be responsible for the past to present geographic distributions of genealogical lineages. This is accomplished by considering the geographic distribution of individuals in light of ge ...

speciation Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook coined the term in 1906 for cladogenesis, the splitting of lineages, as opposed to anagenesis, phyletic evolution within ...

and hybridisation.

Academic career

Hewitt was born in

Worcester Worcester may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England ** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament * Worcester Park, London, Englan ...

UK in 1940 and attended The King's School there. He took his undergraduate degree at the

University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...

and stayed to complete a PhD with advisors

Kenneth Mather Sir Kenneth Mather CBE FRS (22 June 1911 – 20 March 1990) was a British geneticist and botanist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1949, and won its Darwin Medal in 1964. He was the second vice chancellor of the University of Sout ...

, John Jinks, and Bernard John. He subsequently gained a

Fulbright Fellowship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

to study at the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

in 1965–1966. On his return he took up a position at the newly established

, and he was promoted to Professor in 1988. He worked in the School of Biological Sciences until his retirement in 2005, and subsequently maintained a very substantial scientific output as Emeritus Professor.

Publications

At the time of his death Hewitt had 250 peer reviewed academic publications and these had been cited by approximately ten thousand other articles according to Web of Knowledge. His most highly cited publications are in the area of phylogeography and hybrid zones. In particular Hewitt was influential in understanding the diversity of European biota in the context of glacial cycles.

Awards and achievements

Hewitt served as President of the

European Society for Evolutionary Biology The European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) was founded in 1987 in Basel (Switzerland) with around 450 evolutionary biologists attending the inaugural congress. It is an academic society that brings together more than 1500 evolutionary bi ...

from 1999 to 2001. He was awarded the 2005

Molecular Ecology Molecular ecology is a field of evolutionary biology that is concerned with applying molecular population genetics, molecular phylogenetics, and more recently genomics to traditional ecological questions (e.g., species diagnosis, conservation and ...

Prize, and he received a Lifetime Achievement Award for creative mentoring in science (2006) from ''

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. ...

'' magazine. This achievement is reflected in the large number of students and postdocs who have established their own academic careers. Hewitt had strong links with many international organisations; he was awarded Doctor "Honoris Causa" by the

Universidad Autonoma de Madrid The Autonomous University of Madrid ( es, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; UAM), commonly known as simply la Autónoma, is a Spanish public university located in Madrid, Spain. The university was founded in 1968 alongside the Autonomous Univers ...

in 2008; appointed as honorary professor at the Institute of Zoology,

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republ ...

, Beijing in 2000; was a visiting professor at La Sapienza, University of Rome 1 (1998); Royal Society Visiting Fellow, University of Hawaii (1979); visiting fellow at the Australian National University, Canberra (1973–1974); Royal Society Visiting Fellow at the Gulbenkian Institute, Portugal (1971).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hewitt, Godfrey Matthew 1940 births 2013 deaths English geneticists Evolutionary biologists Alumni of the University of Birmingham Academics of the University of East Anglia People educated at King's School, Worcester Scientists from Worcester, England University of California, Davis alumni