F. James Rohlf
Research Professor
Ph.D., University of Kansas, 1962
Email: f.james.rohlf@stonybrook.edu
Teaching
Courses taught at Stony Brook include Geometric morphometrics, Biometry, Multivariate Statistics, Populations Genetics.
Research Interests
F. James Rohlf was a John S. Toll Professor and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and also of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is interested in the applications of mathematical methods and statistics (especially multivariate statistics) to problems in biology with emphasis on morphometrics and the theory of systematics. Along with Robert Sokal, he is the co-author of the popular text Biometry, now in its fourth edition.
Recent research has been concerned with the relatively new field of geometric morphometrics - using statistics to study variation in the shapes of biological structures its covariation with other variables. It is "geometric" because it involves a more complete capturing of shape than could be done with traditional ad hoc suites of measurements, ratios, and angles. Recent work has focused on some of the mathematical and statistical properties of morphological shape spaces as well as applications to primate evolution.
Recent publications have included statistical analyses of the primate evolution, statistical theory, and applications to optic neuropathy in humans.