William (Ned) Friedman

My research focuses on the organismic interfaces between developmental, phylogenetic and evolutionary biology. Armed with hypotheses of relationships among clades, I seek to explore how patterns of morphology, anatomy and reproductive biology have evolved through the modification of developmental processes. My work is primarily focused on the origin and subsequent diversification of flowering plants, and in particular, the establishment of double fertilization and endosperm as defining biological features of angiosperms. In addition to my interest in evolutionary history, I continue to be fascinated by the history of evolutionary thought in the 18th and 19th centuries, leading up to the time of publication of On the Origin of Species.