Stuart A. Kauffman

Stuart Kauffman
Stuart Kauffman in April 2010
Born	(1939-09-28) September 28, 1939 (age 77)
Institutions	University of Chicago University of Pennsylvania University of Calgary
Alma mater	Dartmouth College Oxford University University of California, San Francisco
Known for	NK model, origin of life, gene regulatory networks
Notable awards	Wiener Medal (1969) Marshall Scholar MacArthur Fellow

Stuart Alan Kauffman (born September 28, 1939) is an American medical doctor, theoretical biologist, and complex systems researcher who studies the origin of life on Earth. He was a professor the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Calgary. He is currently emeritus professor of biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and affiliate faculty at the Institute for Systems Biology. He has a number of awards including a MacArthur Fellowship and a Wiener Medal.

He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection as discussed in his book Origins of Order (1993). In 1967 and 1969 Kauffman used random boolean networks to investigate generic self-organizing properties of gene regulatory networks. Using these models, he proposed that cell types are dynamical attractors in gene regulatory networks and that cell differentiation can be understood as transitions between attractors. Recent evidence suggests that cell types in humans and other organisms are attractors. In 1971 he suggested that a zygote may not be able to access all the cell type attractors in it gene regulatory network during development and that some of the developmentally inaccessible cell types might be cancer cell types. This suggested the possibility of "cancer differentiation therapy". He also proposed the self-organized emergence of collectively of polymers, specifically peptides, for the origin of molecular reproduction, which have found experimental support.

Kauffman graduated from Dartmouth in 1960, was awarded the BA (Hons) by Oxford University (where he was a Marshall Scholar) in 1963, and completed a medical degree (M.D.) at the University of California, San Francisco in 1968. After completing his internship, he moved into developmental genetics of the fruitfly, holding appointments first at the University of Chicago from 1969 to 1973, the National Cancer Institute from 1973 to 1975, and then at the University of Pennsylvania from 1975 to 1994, where he rose to Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics.