About the author

Affinity & its residual

Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis

A quantitative geneticist studying the soul, a psychologist to monkeys and chimpanzees, a primatologist investigating humans.

Photograph by John Sypal

My name is Mark James Adams. I am a student of quantitative genetics and a temperamental psychologist. I investigate personality in wild animals. A question I am trying to answer is Why do our personalities differ?

My background is in theoretical biology. For a while I hacked it as a drosophilist in Kyoto. Now I’m training in evolutionary genetics and psychology. And I am a distracted generalist.

Examining individual differences tidily intersects genetic and statistical methods, evolutionary biology, and the ongoing, generations-old speculation on our condition . My field might be called differential biology.

Elsewhere I am

I study at the University of Edinburgh.

My email address is mu+affinity AT raysend・com.

MJA