Richard Gordon (theoretical biologist)
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Richard "Dick" Gordon (born November 6, 1943) is an American theoretical biologist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, the eldest son of Jack Gordon, a salesman and American handball champion,[1] and artist Diana Gordon. He is married to retired scientist Natalie K Björklund with whom he co-wrote his second book and several academic publications. He has three sons, Leland, Bryson and Chason Gordon and three stepchildren Justin, Alan and Lana Hunstad. Gordon was a professor at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba from 1978 to 2011. He is retired and currently volunteers as a consultant scientist for the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Panacea, Florida where he wintered 2010-2019. He also held an adjunct position in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Wayne State University 2012-2018. Gordon lives in Alonsa, Manitoba, Canada.
Gordon was educated at University of Chicago where he did an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a PhD at University of Oregon in chemical physics under Terrell L Hill. His thesis was On Stochastic Growth and Form and Steady State Properties of Ising Lattice Membranes. He published his first paper in 1966.[2] Gordon is an eclectic scientist and prolific writer with over 200 peer-reviewed publications in a wide number of fields. He has edited over two dozen academic books and special issues of scientific journals including two books of his own both of which detail his work on embryonic differentiation waves.[3][4] Gordon has been summoned twice to the Canadian Parliament to testify as an expert scientific witness.[5][6] He is best known for interdisciplinary and cross disciplinary work bridging biology with fields such as mathematics, engineering, physics and chemistry. He wrote the first paper on diatom nanotechnology founding that field.[7][8] He started the field of adaptive image processing.[9] He has also published about algal biofuels,[10] computed tomography,[11][12] AIDS prevention,[13] neural tube defects,[14][15] embryo physics,[16][17] astrobiology[18] as well as research[19][20] and social ethics.[21] His most cited paper is one where he created the nonlinear Algebraic Reconstruction Technique for image reconstruction with Robert Bender and Gabor Herman in 1970, which many inaccurately equate with the linear Kaczmarz method method. ART was based on averaging of a nonlinear stochastic algorithm Algebraic Reconstruction Technique for image reconstruction with Robert Bender and Gabor Herman in 1970.[22]
