Raghavendra Gadagkar is an honorary professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences,

Indian Institute of Science The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a public, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, in the Indian state of Karnataka. The institute was ...

Bangalore Bangalore (), List of renamed places in India, officially Bengaluru (), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan area, metropolitan population of a ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, who studies

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

of social behaviour using

eusocial Eusociality (from Greek εὖ ''eu'' "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping gen ...

insects using ''

Ropalidia marginata ''Ropalidia marginata'' is an Old World species of paper wasp. It is primitively eusocial, not showing the same bias in brood care seen in other social insects with greater asymmetry in relatedness. The species employs a variety of colony foundi ...

'', a locally common wasp as a

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

. He was, from 2014 to 2016, the president of the

Indian National Science Academy The Indian National Science Academy (INSA) is a national academy in New Delhi for Indian scientists in all branches of science and technology. In August 2019, Dr. Chandrima Shaha was appointed as the president of Indian National Science Acade ...

. Gadagkar has published over 275 scientific papers and articles in various international journals as well as in Indian journals like

Current Science ''Current Science'' is an English-language peer-reviewed multidisciplinary scientific journal. It was established in 1932 and is published by the Current Science Association along with the Indian Academy of Sciences. According to the ''Journal C ...

magazine, and the

Journal of Biosciences The ''Journal of Biosciences'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bengaluru, India. The current editor-in-chief is Prof. B J Rao (IISER Tirupati, Tirupati). According to the ''Journal Citation Rep ...

(India). His work on the evolution of eusociality using the theory of "assured fitness returns" which has been examined using empirical data is considered as a significant landmark and advance over the idea of inclusive fitness introduced by

W. D. Hamilton William Donald Hamilton (1 August 1936 – 7 March 2000) was a British evolutionary biologist, recognised as one of the most significant evolutionary theorists of the 20th century. Hamilton became known for his theoretical work expounding a ...

in 1964. He helped established a research group that has examined theoretical predictions, proximate and ultimate factors in the evolution of sociality in wasps. Some of his opinion pieces on science policy have been questioned, such as his exception to the pay to publish, free to read Open Access science publishing model. His first book, ''Survival Strategies'', has been translated into Chinese and Korean. It uses simple language to explain recent advances in behavioural ecology and sociobiology to a general audience. He has also written a more technical book, ''The Social Biology of Ropalidia marginata: Towards understanding the evolution of eusociality'', which puts together over twenty years of his research about the

of eusociality. Since 2002 he is a Non-resident Permanent Fellow at the German institute Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. In 2006 Gadagkar became one of the very few Indian scientists to be elected as a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. He has won numerous awards for his contributions to science research including Cross of the Order of Merit (Germany) in 2015, the

Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award The Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology (SSB) is a science award in India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-la ...

in Biology in 1993 and the

TWAS Prize This is a list of recipients of the TWAS Prize, awarded annually by The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). Summary Agricultural Sciences Biology Chemistry Earth Sciences Engineering Sciences Mathematics Medical Sc ...

in 1999. He holds a number of other academic positions. He is the founding chairman of the Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc, Bangalore. He is an honorary professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research and at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata. He is a Non-resident Permanent fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a chairman of Research Council for History of Science, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi. He was elected as a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in July 2012. In 2004, Gadagkar helped set up the Centre for Contemporary StudiesCCS
/ref> in the Indian Institute of Science. This department aimed to support interdisciplinary discourse.

References

External links

Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar's home page

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gadagkar, Raghavendra 1953 births Indian ecologists Evolutionary biologists Living people Indian Institute of Science faculty Recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Biological Science Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Recipients of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Scientists from Bangalore 20th-century Indian biologists TWAS laureates

References

Further reading

External links