Brian Goodwin

Brian Carey Goodwin (25 March 1931 – 15 July 2009) (Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, Canada - Dartington, Totnes, Devon, UK) was a Canadian mathematician and biologist, a Professor Emeritus at the Open University and a founder of theoretical biology and biomathematics.

He got his PhD at the University of Edinburgh presenting the thesis "Studies in the general theory of development and evolution"[3] under the supervision of Conrad Hal Waddington.

Goodwin equations were originally formulated in terms of conservative (Hamiltonian) systems, thus not taking into account dissipative effects that are required in a realistic approach to regulatory phenomena in biology.

The simplest (but realistic) formulation considers three variables, X, Y and Z indicating the concentrations of RNA, protein and end product which generates the negative feedback loop.

In the field of developmental biology, Goodwin explored self-organization in pattern formation, using case studies from single-cell (as Acetabularia) to multicellular organisms, including early development in Drosophila.

It has been shown (Trainor & Goodwin, 1986) that, in a range of parameter values, instabilities may occur and develop in this system, leading to intracellular patterns of strain and calcium concentration.

The limited repertoire of motifs observed in the spatial organization of plants and animals (at some scales) would be, in Goodwin's opinion, a fingerprint of the role played by such constraints.

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann for example acknowledged that "when biological evolution — based on largely random variation in genetic material and on natural selection — operates on the structure of actual organisms, it does so subject to the laws of physical science, which place crucial limitations on how living things can be constructed."

Richard Dawkins, the former professor for public understanding of science at Oxford University and a well known Darwinian evolutionist, conceded: "I don't think there's much good evidence to support [his thesis], but it's important that somebody like Brian Goodwin is saying that kind of thing, because it provides the other extreme, and the truth probably lies somewhere between."

Wake has also positively reviewed Goodwin's research describing him as a "thoughtful scientist, one of the great dissenters from the orthodoxies of modern evolutionary, genetic and developmental biology".

[9] Price claimed Goodwin's "discussion of evolution is biased, insufficiently developed and poorly informed", and that he misrepresented Darwinism, used straw man arguments and ignored research from population genetics.