Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 17, 2026

Stuart West

Stuart Andrew West is an evolutionary biologist studying social evolution and a Professor of evolutionary biology in the Biology Department at the University of Oxford.

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Jun 17, 2026
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Stuart West
FRS
Born
Stuart Andrew West

1970 (age 55–56)
Alma materUniversity of Cambridge (BA)
Imperial College London (PhD)
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Oxford
University of Edinburgh
University of British Columbia
ThesisReproductive strategies in parasitic hymenoptera (1995)
Websitewww.biology.ox.ac.uk/people/stuart-west Edit this at Wikidata

Stuart Andrew West FRS is an evolutionary biologist studying social evolution and a Professor of evolutionary biology in the Biology Department at the University of Oxford.12345

Education

West completed the Natural Sciences Tripos as an undergraduate student at the University of Cambridge6 followed by a PhD at Imperial College London on reproductive strategies in parasitic hymenoptera.78

Career and research

West's primary research interests are in the area of social evolution, sex allocation theory and microbial evolution. His research has attracted media attention,9 and has been published in high profile journals such as Nature,10 Science,11 the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America12 and Current Biology.131314 West uses theoretical and empirical approaches to explain the evolution of cooperation, communication, and sex ratio.15

With with John Krebs and Nicholas Davies, West is the co-author of the textbook An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology.16

Awards and honours

West was a distinguished junior scholar in residence at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada in 1999 and he has won the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Zoology (2006), the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London (2006)17. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2026.18 He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO)19 and a former holder of a Royal Society University Research Fellowship.8

References

References

  1. Stuart West publications indexed by Google Scholar
  2. "Professor Stuart West". biology.ox.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2024-06-03.
  3. Stuart West publications from Europe PubMed Central
  4. "Staurt West". westgroup.biology.ed.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2008-09-06.
  5. "The West Group". zoo.ox.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2012-11-17.
  6. Stuart A. West ORCID 0000-0003-2152-3153
  7. West, Stuart Andrew (1995). Reproductive strategies in parasitic hymenoptera. london.ac.uk (PhD thesis). Imperial College London. OCLC 940354334. ProQuest 1780576736.
  8. "Professor Stuart West FRS". royalsociety.org.
  9. "Media". Archived from the original on 2017-10-14.
  10. Stephen P Diggle; Ashleigh S Griffin; Genevieve S Campbell; Stuart A. West (1 November 2007). "Cooperation and conflict in quorum-sensing bacterial populations". Nature. 450 (7168): 411–414. doi:10.1038/NATURE06279. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 18004383. Wikidata Q53557688.
  11. Stuart A. West; Ido Pen; Ashleigh S Griffin (1 April 2002). "Cooperation and competition between relatives". Science. 296 (5565): 72–75. doi:10.1126/SCIENCE.1065507. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 11935015. Wikidata Q34589033.
  12. Stuart A. West; Roberta M Fisher; Andy Gardner; Toby Kiers (11 May 2015). "Major evolutionary transitions in individuality". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 112 (33): 10112–10119. Bibcode:2015PNAS..11210112W. doi:10.1073/PNAS.1421402112. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 4547252. PMID 25964342. Wikidata Q28608544.
  13. Stuart A West; Ashleigh S Griffin; Andy Gardner (1 August 2007). "Evolutionary explanations for cooperation". Current Biology. 17 (16): R661-72. doi:10.1016/J.CUB.2007.06.004. ISSN 0960-9822. PMID 17714660. Wikidata Q34666546.
  14. Stuart West publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  15. Stuart A. West; Griffin AS; Andy Gardner (1 March 2007). "Social semantics: altruism, cooperation, mutualism, strong reciprocity and group selection". Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 20 (2): 415–432. doi:10.1111/J.1420-9101.2006.01258.X. ISSN 1010-061X. PMID 17305808. Wikidata Q34575748.
  16. Davies, Nicholas B.; Krebs, John R.; West, Stuart A. (2014). An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology (4th ed.). Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 9781444398472. OCLC 898271534.
  17. "News & Events - Academic Innovators to Accept Awards at Royal Dinner". ed.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 2022-12-07.
  18. Anon (2026-05-27). "Exceptional scientists elected as Fellows of the Royal Society". royalsociety.org. London: Royal Society. Retrieved 2026-05-31.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  19. Anon (2014). "Stuart A. West". people.embo.org. Heidelberg: European Molecular Biology Organization.