Adam Eyre-Walker is an Evolutionary Geneticist who has made significant contributions to our understanding of evolution at the molecular level. He has devoted much of his career to understanding how much of the process of evolution is due to adaptive changes and how much is due to differences that have little consequence to the fitness of an organism. In addition, he has quantified the proportion of mutations that are harmful to organisms and how harmful they are. He has also studied the evolution of characteristics which at first sight would seem to have no fitness consequences to an organism.

His work involves the statistical analysis of DNA sequence data, the development of methods and theoretical work. He has worked on data from a wide variety of organisms, from bacteria to humans.

In 2002 he was awarded the Balfour Prize by the Genetics Society and in 2012 the President’s award by the European Society for Evolutionary Biology. He works at the University of Sussex and lives in Brighton with his wife and son.