Kenneth Willcox Wachter

As a mathematical demographer and statistician, he studies systematic constraints and random influences that shape the structure of human populations. Current interests focus on evolutionary demography,  genetic load as a contributor to senescence,  and the analysis of genomic data in conjunction with longitudinal demographic and social surveys.  In earlier work, he  helped develop methods of computer simulation to understand the rarity of coresident family members in pre-industrial English households, laying foundations for agent-based modeling in demography.. With these methods, he and many students have developed forecasts of  kin and family support available to new generations of elderly. Working in "non-linear" demography, he identified mechanisms that give rise to specific kinds of cycles in fertility and population growth.  He has worked to develop the new field of biodemography,  studying patterns of mortality at extreme ages shared between humans and other species and, with David Steinsaltz and Steve Evans, has developed mathematical models for mutation, selection, and recombination with demographic structure.   His textbook Essential Demographic Methods (Harvard University Press)  aims at fostering a new generation of researchers adept at formal demography.