Axel Meyer

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Axel Meyer is a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Konstanz, in Germany. He studies several fundamental issues in evolutionary biology related to diversity at different levels of biological organization. One focus is the genesis of genomic, developmental, and morphological diversity; another is the investigation of mechanisms of speciation.

At the Radcliffe Institute, Meyer is reviewing and synthesizing the knowledge on the evolution of the adaptive radiations of cichlid fishes that each are comprised of hundreds of unique species. These fish species flocks are textbook examples for extremely rapid diversification.

Meyer studied biology at Philipps-Universität Marburg and Kiel University, in Germany, before studying at the University of Miami, the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University. He received his PhD in zoology from UC Berkeley, where he later worked with Allan C. Wilson as an Alfred P. Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Evolution in the biochemistry department. He has also worked as an assistant profressor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Meyer has been awarded a Fulbright grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Miller Research Professorship at Berkeley, and a fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He is a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, EMBO, and other academies in Germany and Europe. He has also received academic honors in the United States and Europe, including the Academy Prize of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Carus Medal of the Leopoldina, an ERC Advanced Grant, and the Hector Science Award.