Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza Paul Ricoeur, Mikhael Gromov, Sir John Elliott and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza Mrs. President of the Swiss Confederation, Members of the Balzan Foundation, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Balzan Prize has been awarded to me for my research into the origins of man. The first ten years of my work as a researcher were devoted to the genetics of bacteria. However, in 1952, in Italy, I remembered the original teachings of my great mentor in the field of genetics, Professor Adriano Buzzati-Traverso. I owe to him my interest in the genetics of population and evolution, and I decided to turn to this interest, and to concentrate it on humans. I feel the choice of humans was dictated by my university studies, which I completed in medicine. There was absolutely no doubt that natural selection played a central role. The influence of chance had already been especially investigated by one of the fathers of the mathematical theory of evolution, Sewall Wright, but there were still no usable empirical data. In passing, I am pleased to be able to remind you that Sewall Wright was awarded the Balzan Prize in 1984, having outlived the other two by a good many years. The other geneticist who so far had the honour of receiving this prize was John Maynard Smith, who was one of the most brilliant students of J. B. S. Haldane. So we have the interesting coincidence that of the three geneticists who have been awarded the Balzan Prize until now, Sewall Wright was the last of the three great names who was still alive, and the other two were students of Haldane and Fisher. | |
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