Mark Pagel

Education Pagel was a student educated at the University of Washington where he was awarded a PhD in Mathematics in 1980 for work on ridge regression.

Research During the late 1980s, Pagel worked on developing ways to analyse species relatedness, in the zoology department at the University of Oxford. Having met there, in 1994, Pagel and anthropologist Ruth Mace co-authored a paper, "The Comparative Method in Anthropology", that used phylogenetic methods to analyse human cultures, pioneering a new field of science — using evolutionary trees, or phylogenies, in anthropology, to explain human behaviour. Pagel's interests include evolution and the development of languages.

Pagel was the editor-in-chief for the Encyclopedia of Evolution, published in 2002. He authored Wired for Culture: The Natural History of Human Cooperation, which was voted one of best science books of 2012 by The Guardian.

Personal life Pagel's partner is Ruth Mace, professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London. Together they have two sons,