Robert P. Wagner

Robert Philip Wagner (1918-2004) was an American professor of genetics who spent most of his academic career at the University of Texas at Austin. After retiring from academics, he served as a long-term consultant for the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He wrote a number of key textbooks in genetics and was known as an enthusiastic early proponent of the Human Genome Project.

Early life and education Wagner was born on May 11, 1918, in The Bronx, New York City, as the grandson of central European immigrants. He attended Townsend Harris High School in Queens, New York, and then began his undergraduate studies at the City College of New York. Originally intending to prepare for law school, his interests changed after an early chemistry course and he graduated in 1940 with a degree in chemistry. He had planned to begin a Ph.D. with Theodosius Dobzhansky at the California Institute of Technology, but after Dobzhansky decided to relocate to Columbia University, Wagner decided he preferred not to stay in New York and instead took a position at the University of Texas at Austin to work with J. T. Patterson on the genetics of Drosophila (fruit flies). Wagner received his Ph.D. from UT in 1943. Wagner was among the founding members of the Society for the Study of Evolution in the 1940s. During his academic career Wagner coauthored three more textbooks.

Personal life Wagner met and married his wife Margaret in 1947 while in Pasadena, California, to work at Caltech. The couple had three children.

Wagner died on March 3, 2004. His papers are held by the University of Texas at Austin.