Graduate Program in Science Technology and Society, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2020 Apr 27;375(1797):20190352. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0352. Epub 2020 Mar 9.
The Price equation was a piece of abstract mathematics. What kind of a connection could it possibly have had to George Price's personal life and biography? Here, I will argue that the initial impetus for Price's foray into mathematical population genetics stemmed from a preoccupation with the origins of family, one that was born following a divorce from his wife and the abandonment of their two young girls. What is special about the Price equation is the way in which it associates statistically between two groups, a 'mother' and 'daughter' population. The association need not mean genetic relatedness in the narrow sense of direct descent, and it allows us to see selection working at different levels simultaneously, a fact that was not lost on William Hamilton. Hamilton was one of the few friends who desperately tried to save Price from falling into the abyss of depression and homelessness in the period following the publication of 'Selection and covariance' (Price 1928 , 520-521 (doi:10.1038/227520a0)). Viewed in this light, the Price equation assumes new meaning. This article is part of the theme issue 'Fifty years of the Price equation'.
价格方程是一段抽象的数学。它与乔治·普莱斯的个人生活和传记可能有什么联系呢？在这里，我将论证，促使普莱斯涉足数理人口遗传学的最初动力源自于他对家庭起源的关注，这源于他与妻子离婚并抛弃了他们的两个年幼的女儿。价格方程的特别之处在于它在统计学上将两个群体（“母亲”和“女儿”群体）联系起来的方式。这种联系不一定意味着狭义上的直系血统的遗传关系，它允许我们同时看到选择在不同层次上的作用，这一点并没有被威廉·汉密尔顿忽视。汉密尔顿是为数不多的几个朋友之一，他在《选择与协变》（Price 1928，520-521（doi:10.1038/227520a0））出版后，拼命试图将普莱斯从抑郁和无家可归的深渊中拯救出来。从这个角度来看，价格方程具有了新的意义。本文是主题为“价格方程五十周年”的一部分。
