Motoo Kimura's use of diffusion theory in population genetics (Q1914186)

The mathematical expressions involved in Kimura's solutions to diffusion problems are usually quite complicated; for the present purpose it seems unnecessary to reproduce them, although the problems themselves will be described. Headings will be inserted indicating the main themes, and the papers will be mentioned mainly in chronological order. Of course, some themes were discussed several times by Kimura, which causes some difficulties in the layout of this review. I have made occasional comments, with the benefit of hindsight, concerning aspects of Kimura's work and how he has influenced my own work and that of others. I have not tried to attribute all diffusion results back to their original authors; it is not usually clear in Kimura's papers to what extent he was adapting the diffusion results of others into the genetics context rather than making discoveries independently himself. In either case, he added greatly to the theory of population genetics, and his genetical questions and models stimulated theoretical work in diffusion theory.