Michael Waterman

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American mathematician

title: "Michael Waterman" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["living-people", "1942-births", "people-from-bandon,-oregon", "american-bioinformaticians", "21st-century-american-biologists", "university-of-southern-california-faculty", "idaho-state-university-faculty", "oregon-state-university-alumni", "fellows-of-the-society-for-industrial-and-applied-mathematics", "fellows-of-the-international-society-for-computational-biology", "members-of-the-united-states-national-academy-of-engineering", "members-of-the-united-states-national-academy-of-sciences", "members-of-the-french-academy-of-sciences", "foreign-members-of-the-chinese-academy-of-sciences", "people-from-coquille,-oregon", "20th-century-american-statisticians", "21st-century-american-statisticians"] description: "American mathematician" topic_path: "science/mathematics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Waterman" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American mathematician ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox scientist"]

FieldValue
nameMichael Waterman
birth_nameMichael Spencer Waterman
imageMichael Waterman.jpg
image_size150px
captionMichael Waterman in 2004
birth_date
birth_placeCoquille, Oregon, US
field{{Plainlist
work_institutions{{Plainlist
alma_materOregon State University
Michigan State University (PhD)
doctoral_advisorJohn Rankin Kinney
thesis_titleSome Ergodic Properties of Multi-Dimensional F-Expansions
thesis_urlhttps://www.proquest.com/docview/302449931
thesis_year1969
notable_studentsPavel Pevzner (postdoc)
Tandy Warnow (postdoc)
known_for{{Plainlist
prizes{{Plainlist
* Guggenheim Fellowship (1995)<ref nameusc/
* Gairdner Foundation International Award (2002)<ref nameusc/
* ISCB Fellow (2009)<ref namefellows
* Dan David Prize (2015)<ref namedan-david-prize}}
website
::

| name = Michael Waterman | birth_name = Michael Spencer Waterman | image = Michael Waterman.jpg | image_size = 150px | caption = Michael Waterman in 2004 | birth_date = | birth_place = Coquille, Oregon, US | death_date = | death_place = | residence = | citizenship = | nationality = | ethnicity = | field = {{Plainlist|

Education and early life

Waterman grew up near Bandon, Oregon,

Research and career

Waterman is one of the founders and current leaders in the area of computational biology. He focuses on applying mathematics, statistics, and computer science techniques to various problems in molecular biology. His work has contributed to some of the most widely used tools in the field. In particular, the Smith-Waterman algorithm (developed with Temple F. Smith) is the basis for many sequence alignment programs. In 1988, Waterman and Eric Lander published a landmark paper describing a mathematical model for fingerprint mapping.{{Cite journal | last1 = Lander | first1 = E. S. | author-link1 = Eric Lander | last2 = Waterman | first2 = M. S. | author-link2 = Michael Waterman | title = Genomic mapping by fingerprinting random clones: A mathematical analysis | journal = Genomics | volume = 2 | issue = 3 | pages = 231–239 | year = 1988 | pmid = 3294162 | doi = 10.1016/0888-7543(88)90007-9

With Pavel A. Pevzner (a former postdoctoral researcher in his lab), he began the international conference Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB), and he is a founding editor of the Journal of Computational Biology. Waterman also authored one of the earliest textbooks in the field: Introduction to Computational Biology.

Awards and honors

With Cyrus Chothia and David Haussler, Waterman was awarded the 2015 Dan David Prize for his contributions to the field of bioinformatics. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Tel Aviv University in 2011, an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Southern Denmark in 2013, and an Honorary Doctorate from Oregon State University in 2024.

Waterman has been a member of the US American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1995, a member of the US National Academy of Engineering since 2012, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since 2013, and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences since 2001. He has been an academician of the French Academy of Sciences since 2005.

Waterman was elected an ISCB Fellow in 2009 by the International Society for Computational Biology and was awarded their ISCB Senior Scientist Award in 2009.

Personal life

Waterman has written a memoir, Getting Outside, of a childhood spent on an isolated livestock ranch on the southern coast of Oregon in the mid-20th century.

References

References

  1. American Men and Women of Science, Thomson Gale 2005 {{ISBN needed
  2. {{MathGenealogy
  3. Anon. (2017). "ISCB Fellows". [[International Society for Computational Biology]].
  4. Anon. (2015). "Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales among 2015 Dan David Prize winners".
  5. Anon. (2017). "Michael S. Waterman: Professor of Biological Sciences, Mathematics, Computer Science, University of Southern California".
  6. (2006). "ISCB Honors Michael S. Waterman and Mathieu Blanchette". [[PLOS Computational Biology]].
  7. Waterman, Michael Smith. (1969). "Some Ergodic Properties of Multi-Dimensional F-Expansions". Michigan State University.
  8. (1981). "Identification of common molecular subsequences". [[Journal of Molecular Biology]].
  9. (1995). "A New Algorithm for DNA Sequence Assembly". [[Journal of Computational Biology]].
  10. Anon. (2017). "The RECOMB conference series".
  11. (1995). "Introduction to computational biology: maps, sequences and genomes". Chapman & Hall.
  12. Waterman, Michael. (2016). "Getting Outside: A Far-Western Childhood". CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

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