10/03/2020
In Memoriam
Charles J. Goodnight
Professor of Biology
1955 – 2020
Dr. Goodnight earned his Ph.D. at one of the most exciting times in the quantitative development of the field of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago, which was an exciting place for cutting edge thinkers debating the nature of quantitative genetics, natural selection, and evolutionary change. He was always attracted to underdog theories. He began his life’s work on group selection, the idea that natural selection can promote traits at the level of entire groups in addition to those of individuals, and he contributed significantly to the development of a rigorous theoretical and empirical investigation of this process with research funding from the National Science Foundation. Over the course of his career, he watched as his work contributed to steady and on-going revival of a theory that had been long ignored as “unimportant.”
Charles joined the University of Vermont faculty in 1988 as an Assistant Professor, with promotion to Associate Professor in 1994 and Full Professor in 1999. After nomination by colleagues, he was recognized as a University Scholar in 2002-2003 for sustained excellence in research, creative, and scholarly activities. He was grateful to UVM for giving him the opportunity to pursue his research interests wherever they led. Through his many years at the university, he taught organismal biology, evolution, biostatistics, philosophy of science, and conservation biology to hundreds of students from the introductory to the graduate level. His quantitative skills were formidable, and he enjoyed both proposing contrarian ideas and delving into the mathematical weeds to ascertain their feasibility and importance.
We at the Department of Biology, along with his colleagues near and far, will miss Charles’s kind nature and optimism, his good humor, infectious laugh, and his strong sense of community and fellowship.
