John C. DeFries (born November 26, 1934) is one of the world's leading

behavior geneticists Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...

. His achievements include being President of the Behavior Genetics Association (1982–1983) and cofounder of the journal ''

Behavior Genetics Behavioural genetics, also referred to as behaviour genetics, is a field of scientific research that uses genetic methods to investigate the nature and origins of individual differences in behaviour. While the name "behavioural genetics" ...

'', as well as its co-editor (1970–1978). His awards include The Dobzhansky Award for Outstanding Research in Behavior Genetics ( Behavior Genetics Association, 1992), Consulting Editor of the ''

Journal of Learning Disabilities ''Journal of Learning Disabilities'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers the field of special education. The editor-in-chief is Stephanie Al Otaiba (Southern Methodist University). It was established in 1968 and is currently published b ...

'' (1987–2002), Fellowships in the International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities, Association for Psychological Science, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Section J (Psychology). His contributions include major

twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of TwinLast Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two em ...

and adoption studies of cognitive abilities, genetics of learning disabilities, and, when molecular tools became available, pioneering the use of DNA markers to locate genes that influence behavioral characters. At the Institute for Behavioral Genetics at the

University of Colorado Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sy ...

Dr. DeFries established the world's first large twin study of dyslexia at the Institute for Behavior Genetics in Boulder, and supervised over 17 PhD students. Among his works are a standard text on behavior genetics and original work on behavior-genetic methodology, some of it in collaboration with David Fulker. DeFries' articles have been cited over 29,000 times and he has an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

of 87.

Selected books

*''Behavioral Genetics in the Postgenomic Era'', by

Robert Plomin Robert Joseph Plomin (born 1948) is an American/British psychologist and geneticist best known for his work in twin studies and behavior genetics. A ''Review of General Psychology'' survey, published in 2002, ranked Plomin as the 71st most cited ...

, John C. DeFries, Ian W. Craig, and Peter McGuffin *''Behavioral Genetics'' by

, John C. DeFries, Gerald E. McClearn and Peter McGuffin.

References

External links

DeFries' homepage
* 1934 births Living people American geneticists Behavior geneticists Academic journal editors University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni University of Colorado Boulder faculty Fellows of the Association for Psychological Science Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science {{geneticist-stub