Margaret Gale Kidwell (born August 17, 1933) is a British American evolutionary biologist and Regents’ Professor Emerita at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

, Tucson. She grew up on a farm in the English Midlands during World War II. After graduating from the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

in 1953, she worked in the British Civil Service as an Agricultural Advisory Officer from 1955-1960. She moved to the US in 1960 under the auspices of a Kellogg Foundation Fellowship to study Genetics and Statistics at

Iowa State University Iowa State University of Science and Technology (Iowa State University, Iowa State, or ISU) is a public land-grant research university in Ames, Iowa. Founded in 1858 as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm, Iowa State became one of the n ...

. She married quantitative geneticist James F. Kidwell in 1961, obtained her MS degree in 1962 and moved with her husband to

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

in 1963. She received her PhD from

in 1973 under the guidance of

Masatoshi Nei (born January 2, 1931) is a Japanese-born American evolutionary biologist currently affiliated with the Department of Biology at Temple University as a Carnell Professor. He was, until recently, Evan Pugh Professor of Biology at Pennsylvania S ...

. From 1973 to 1984 she pursued independent research into a number of anomalous genetic phenomena in ''Drosophila'' which later lead to collaborative studies resulting in the discovery of hybrid dysgenesis and the isolation of transposable P elements. After appointment as Professor of Biology at

in 1984 she moved to the

in 1985 as Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Additional positions included Chair of the Interdisciplinary Genetics Program from 1988-1991 and Head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from 1992-1997. Research at the

has increasingly focused on the evolutionary significance of transposable genetic elements. In 1996, she was the first woman from Arizona to be elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences

Honours and awards

Kidwell was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1992. In 1993 she was elected fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences. By 1994 she became a regent professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Arizona. She was a recipient of the Key Distinguished Lecture award for the American Genetic Association in 1991. She was also elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 1996.

Selected publications

* Kidwell, M. G. 1972. Genetic change of recombination value in ''Drosophila melanogaster'': I. Artificial selection for high and low recombination and some properties of recombination-modifying genes
Genetics 70: 419-432
* Kidwell, M. G., J. F. Kidwell & M. Nei 1973. A case of high rate of spontaneous mutation affecting viability in ''Drosophila melanogaster''
Genetics 75: 133-153
* Kidwell, M. G., J. F. Kidwell & J. A. Sved 1977. Hybrid dysgenesis in ''D. melanogaster'': a syndrome of aberrant traits including mutation, sterility & male recombination
Genetics 86: 813–833
* Rubin, G. M., M. G. Kidwell & P. M. Bingham 1982. The molecular basis of P-M hybrid dysgenesis: The nature of induced mutations.
Cell 29: 987-994
* Kidwell, M. G. 1983. Evolution of hybrid dysgenesis determinants in ''Drosophila melanogaster''
Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 80: 1655-1659
* Kidwell, M. G. and D. Lisch. 1997. Transposable elements as sources of variation in animals and plants
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 94: 7704-7711
* Kidwell, M. G. and D. R. Lisch (2001) Perspective: Transposable elements, parasitic DNA and genome evolution
Evolution 55:1-24
* Kidwell, M. G. and D. R. Lisch 2017. Hybrid Dysgenesis. In Reference Module in Life Sciences, Elsevier, Oxford.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kidwell, Margaret Living people 21st-century American biologists Women evolutionary biologists University of Arizona faculty Alumni of the University of Nottingham Iowa State University alumni Brown University alumni 1933 births