From Observations to Optimal Phylogenetic Trees

Born in Buenos Aires, Pablo A. Goloboff became interested in spider biology and systematics in the late 70's, in the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. His first papers (published during the 80's) were on spider systematics, but he soon became more interested in systematic theory and phylogenetic methods. He graduated with a Licenciatura in Biology in 1989, from Universidad de Buenos Aires, and then pursued doctoral studies in Cornell University and the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, between 1989 and 1994. He published his first methodological papers in the early 90's, gradually switching his research from spider systematics to systematic theory. During his stay at Cornell University, he became more involved with quantitative methods for parsimony analysis, and wrote his first computer programs. He moved to Tucuman in 1994, to work for the CONICET, and continued working on theory and methods for systematics and historical biogeography. He has published over a hundred scientific papers and about a dozen computer programs, the best known of which are Nona, Piwe, TNT (for phylogenetics), and VNDM (for biogeography). He is a Fellow Honoris Causa of the Willi Hennig Society, and served as President of the society from 2004 to 2006. Since 1995, he has been regularly teaching courses on phylogenetics in Argentina and about a dozen countries.