Russell Gray

Timeline

1. 1990

   A PhD at Auckland

   A thesis titled Design, constraint and construction: essays and experiments on evolution and foraging earns him a PhD at the University of Auckland in 1990. Four years of lecturing at the University of Otago in Dunedin follow, and he then returns to the School of Psychology at Auckland.

2. 2000–2003

   Language trees for two families

   In 2000, he and Fiona Jordan use language trees to test competing models of the Austronesian expansion into the Pacific. In 2003, he and Quentin Atkinson retrace the family tree of the Indo-European languages and estimate the first Indo-European language at between 7,800 and 9,800 years old, among rural communities in Anatolia.

3. 2001

   Tool-making New Caledonian crows

   At the University of Auckland, he works with Gavin Hunt on tool manufacture in New Caledonian crows, and a 2001 study with Hunt and Michael Corballis reports population-level laterality in tool manufacture. His later work with Auckland colleagues shows that the birds' tool traditions are shaped by learning, innovation and ecological opportunity, and that they rest on advanced cognitive capacities that include aspects of causal reasoning.

4. 2008

   Royal Society of New Zealand fellowship

   In 2008, he is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand.

5. 2009

   Pulses and pauses in the Pacific

   A 2009 Science paper with Alexei Drummond and Simon Greenhill, titled Language phylogenies reveal expansion pulses and pauses in Pacific settlement, reconstructs the settlement of the Pacific. His Bayesian language trees place the origin of Austronesian languages in Taiwan approximately 5,200 years ago.

6. 2012

   The first Mason Durie Medal

   In 2012, he receives the inaugural Mason Durie Medal, awarded for advances at the frontiers of social science. The Royal Society recognizes his application of evolutionary thinking and computational methods to questions of language, cognition and culture.

7. 2014

   Founding director in Jena

   In 2014, he becomes a founding director, with the geneticist Johannes Krause, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and leads its Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution. The institute's program sets out to develop and apply new scientific methods toward an integrated science of human history.

8. Since June 2020

   Director in Leipzig

   In June 2020, he and his department move to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, where he is reappointed as a Director. A Grambank study announced in April 2023 names him senior author; the database documents grammatical variation in over 2,400 languages and was initiated by his department. He directs the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution and leads Glottobank and Grambank.