April 23, 2008 | Press Release

"Births, Deaths, and Mathematics"

James W. Vaupel Receives a Major International Award for his Work in Mathematical Demography.

James W. Vaupel, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, was awarded the Mindel C. Sheps Award on April 18, 2008 for his contributions to the methodological foundations of demography. This prize, one of the most prestigious international awards in demography, is awarded biennially by the Population Association of America and the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). The award is named for Mindel C. Sheps, MD (1913-1973), who became an expert in statistics as well as demographic and biological aspects of fertility through her studies on the impact of social factors on public health.

As the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, which is now among the most renowned research institutions in the world in the population sciences, Vaupel emphasized mathematical demography from the outset. To understand the long-term development of populations or the life histories of individuals, Vaupel says, "a solid mathematical foundation is required." In interpreting the relationships between complex demographic phenomena, Vaupel will often advise researchers to go back to the basics of "births, deaths, and mathematics." Although demography brings together many disciplines and includes methodological approaches from the humanities and social sciences as well as from medicine and biology, it is mathematical methodology that is often the key to solving demographic problems. Among Vaupel’s pioneering contributions in mathematical demography is the introduction and application of so-called "frailty models" to the field of population science. Frailty models bring new understanding to an individual’s or a group’s risk of death with age.

Vaupel’s recent work at the institute has been focused on the new field of evolutionary demography. Vaupel and colleagues propose to use complex mathematical functions to model the impact of various factors on aging in different organisms.

In addition to this current honor, the Population Association of America awarded James W. Vaupel its Irene B. Taeuber Award for lifetime research achievement in 2001. Vaupel is now only the 4th demographer in the history of the Population Association of America to be the recipient of both these awards.