Dr. Markus Knoflacher studied Zoology and Botany at the University of Vienna in Austria and acquired a doctoral degree in philosophy. His professional career in extra-university institutions was focussed on interdisciplinary research tackled from the perspective of systems theory. After retirement he conducts research as an independent scientist.
About the Translator
The translator of Relativity of Evolution, Robert D. Martin, is a British citizen now residing in Zürich, Switzerland. He originally studied at Oxford University, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in zoology and a PhD in animal behaviour. For his doctoral thesis, he conducted research for two years at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioural Physiology near Munich. There, he became completely fluent in German and completed his first book translation (Mimicry by Wolfgang Wickler) while still a student. After his PhD, for two years he conducted postdoctoral research in France, becoming equally fluent in French. During this time, he translated from German into English the 2-volume collected papers of Konrad Lorenz, who subsequently shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Martin’s subsequent career was decidedly international, with successive senior academic posts in the UK (advancing from Lecturer to Professor of Biological Anthropology at University College London), Switzerland (Director and Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Zürich) and the USA (Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Curator of Biological Anthropology at the Field Museum, Chicago). Evolutionary biology has consistently been central to his research, with emphases on human origins, biological anthropology, and reproduction. His over 330 academic publications include a highly successful university textbook (Primate Origins and Evolution), a book for a general readership on the evolution of human reproduction (How We Do It), and over 80 peer-reviewed scientific papers. To date, he has translated or co-translated into English 16 academic books, 8 from French and 8 from German.