Suresh Dinakar Jayakar (21 September 1937, Bombay – 21 January 1988) was an Indian biologist who pioneered in the use of quantitative approaches in genetics and biology. He studied mathematical statistics, physics and mathematics at the University of Lucknow and joined the

Indian Statistical Institute Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta C ...

in 1959 where he met

J. B. S. Haldane John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (; 5 November 18921 December 1964), nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biolog ...

who had just moved to India. At that institute, Jayakar received early instruction in genetics in a course taught by Krishna Dronamraju and additional training with

Helen Spurway Helen Spurway (12 June 1915 – 15 February 1978) was a British biologist and the second wife of J. B. S. Haldane. She emigrated to India in 1957 along with him and conducted research in field biology with Krishna Dronamraju, Suresh Jayakar, and o ...

. He moved to Orissa when Haldane moved. He became the director of the Genetics and Biometry Laboratory after Haldane's death. He made many studies on

yellow-wattled lapwing The yellow-wattled lapwing (''Vanellus malabaricus'') is a lapwing that is endemic to the Indian Subcontinent. It is found mainly on the dry plains of peninsular India and has a sharp call and is capable of fast flight. Although they do not migr ...

s along with Helen Spurway. He collaborated with Helen Spurway and Krishna Dronamraju in studies of the nest building activity of the wasp ''

Sceliphron ''Sceliphron'', also known as black mud daubers or black mud-dauber wasps, is a genus of Hymenoptera of the Sphecidae family of wasps. They are solitary mud daubers and build nests made of mud. Nests are frequently constructed in shaded niches, ...

madraspatanum'' (Fabr.). He also made studies on quantitative genetics, sex-determination mechanisms. He began work with J. B. S. Haldane working on quantitative aspects of genetics and biology. After Haldane's death, he moved to Italy at the invitation of

Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (; 25 January 1922 – 31 August 2018) was an Italian geneticist. He was a population geneticist who taught at the University of Parma, the University of Pavia and then at Stanford University. Works Schooling an ...

at the

University of Pavia The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it on ...

. Haldane considered him as a star who would rise in the "Indian scientific firmament".

Publications

A partial list of publications includes: * Haldane J. B. S. and Jayakar S. D. 1963 Polymorphism due to selection of varying direction. J. Genet. 58; 237-242 * Haldane J. B. S. and Jayakar S. D. 1963 Polymorphism due to selection depending on the composition of a population. J. Genet. 58: 318-323 * Haldane J. B. S. and Jayakar S. D. 1965 Selection for a single pair of allelomorphs with complete replacement, J. Genet. 59: 81-87 * Jayakar S. D. 1963 Proterandry. in solitary wasps. Nature (London) 198: 208-209 * Jayakar S. D. 1970 A mathematical model for interaction of gene frequencies in a parasite and its host. Theor. Pop. Biol. 1: 140-164 * Jayakar S.. D. 1970 On the detection and estimation of linkage between a locus influencing a quantitative character and a marker locus. Biometrics 26: 451-464 * Jayakar S. D. 1987 Some two locus models for the evolution of sex-determining mechanisms. Theor. Pop. Biol. 32: 188-215 * Jayakar S. D. and Cavalli-Sforza L. L. 1986 Gene frequency variation, population genetic structure, and natural selection. In African pygmies (ed.) L. L. Cavalli-Sforza (New York: Academic Press) pp. 319–338 *Spurway Helen, S.D. Jayakar, and K.R. Dronamraju 1964. One nest of Sceliphron madraspatanum (Fabr.).(Sphecidae: Hymenoptera). J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 61: 1-42.

References

External links

List of publications
No longer available 1937 births 1988 deaths University of Lucknow alumni Indian geneticists {{biologist-stub