Paul Ewald was born in the United States in 1953. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in biological sciences in 1975 from the University of California, Irvine, and a PhD in zoology with specialization in ecology and evolution in 1980 from the University of Washington.
Ewald was the first recipient of the George E. Burch Fellowship in Theoretic Medicine and Affiliated Sciences, and he conceived of a new discipline, evolutionary medicine. His book published in 1993, Evolution of Infectious Disease, provided one of the first in-depth presentations of insights from evolutionary biology on various fields in health science, including epidemiology and medicine and is widely acknowledged as the watershed event for the emergence of this discipline.
Ewald is currently director of the program in Evolutionary Medicine at the Biology Department of the University of Louisville.
Ewald delivered the Beatty Lecture on October 13, 1999, titled "What's Catching: The Darwinism of Disease". His Lecture was part of a month-long series of Beatty lectures called the Ape or Angel Â鶹AV Millennium Series, which explored how evolutionary theory provides a basis for new medical therapies. Eugenie Scott and Steven Mithen provided the first and third lectures.
Image: Holly Swain Ewald
