Hubert P. Yockey (April 15, 1916 – January 31, 2016) was an American physicist and

information theorist Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. ...

. He worked under

Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is often ...

on the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

, and at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. He studied the application of information theory to problems in

biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

and published his conclusions in the ''

Journal of Theoretical Biology The ''Journal of Theoretical Biology'' is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering theoretical biology, as well as mathematical, computational, and statistical aspects of biology. Some research areas covered by the journal include cell ...

'' from 1974 onwards. Yockey was very critical of the

primordial soup Primordial soup, also known as, primordial goo, primordial ooze, prebiotic soup and prebiotic broth, is the hypothetical set of conditions present on the Earth around 3.7 to 4.0 billion years ago. It is an aspect of the heterotrophic theory (also k ...

theory of the

origin of life In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothes ...

, and believed that "the origin of life is unsolvable as a scientific problem". He died on January 31, 2016 at the age of 99.

Publications

*Hubert P. Yockey ''Information Theory and Molecular Biology'' 1992 Cambridge University Press, *Hubert P. Yockey, ''Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life'' 2005 Cambridge University Press, * *

Trivia

Well into his sixties, Yockey organized and led canoe expeditions in the wilderness of Nunavik,

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is one of the thirtee ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

References

External links

Cynthia Yockey's (daughter) blog
who often posts updates on Hubert Yockey
Hubert Yockey's website (dormant)
1916 births 2016 deaths American physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society Manhattan Project people {{US-physicist-stub

Publications

Trivia

See also

References

External links