William Irons is an American evolutionary anthropologist and

professor emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

in anthropology at the

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Chart ...

known for his research on the

Yomut Turkmen The Yomut or Yomud is a Turkmen tribe that lives in Western and Central Asia, including Gorgan, Iran; Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan; the eastern Caspian shores; Khiva, Uzbekistan; and Dashoguz, Turkmenistan. The Yomut carpet is a type of rug t ...

, in northern

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkm ...

. His research interests include

evolutionary ecology Evolutionary ecology lies at the intersection of ecology and evolutionary biology. It approaches the study of ecology in a way that explicitly considers the evolutionary histories of species and the interactions between them. Conversely, it can ...

reproductive strategies Reproduction (or procreation or breeding) is the biological process by which new individual organisms – "offspring" – are produced from their "parent" or parents. Reproduction is a fundamental feature of all known life; each individual org ...

demography Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as ed ...

and the evolutionary foundations of

morality Morality () is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong). Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of cond ...

and

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural ...

. Together with

Napoleon Chagnon Napoleon Alphonseau Chagnon (27 August 1938 – 21 September 2019) was an American cultural anthropologist, professor of sociocultural anthropology at the University of Missouri in Columbia and member of the National Academy of Sciences. Chagnon ...

he organized a set of symposia for the 1976 annual meeting of the

American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...

exploring the use of

behavioral ecology Behavioral ecology, also spelled behavioural ecology, is the study of the evolutionary basis for animal behavior due to ecological pressures. Behavioral ecology emerged from ethology after Niko Tinbergen outlined four questions to address w ...

in anthropology. In 1979 this led to the publication of a volume edited by Chagnon and Irons entitled ''Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective'' encompassing much of the earliest work in anthropology designed to evaluate evolutionary theories of human behavior. Irons, Chagnon and Lee Cronk also co-edited the volume ''Adaptation and Human Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective''

Awards and honors

*President of the Evolutionary Anthropology Society, a Section of the American Anthropological Association (2004 – 2005) *President of the

Human Behavior and Evolution Society The Human Behavior and Evolution Society, or HBES, is an interdisciplinary, international society of researchers, primarily from the social and biological sciences, who use modern evolutionary theory to help to discover human nature — including e ...

, 2001-3. *Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (elected 1980). *Lifetime Achievement Award for the Study of Pastoral Nomads from the Commission on Nomadic Peoples, International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 2000. *Human Behavior and Evolution Society: Lifetime Career Award, 2011.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Irons, Bill American anthropologists Evolutionary psychologists Human Behavior and Evolution Society Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Northwestern University faculty