Axel Lange graduated from the Jesuit College St. Blasien in the Black Forest, Germany and then studied Economics and philosophy at the University of Freiburg. Professionally, he previously worked in the sales and marketing management in IT until he found his new interest in the theory of evolution. This made made him see biology in a completely new way. Lange's first book was published in 2012 on Evo-Devo and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis provided the basis for the University of Vienna to sign a dissertation contract with him. At the Department of Theoretical Biology, Lange studied biology and researched about evolutionary limb development in vertebrates and – from an evolutionary point of view – about polydactyly, the formation of additional fingers and toes in newborns.
The standard evolutionary theory, the Modern Synthesis, can’t explain the mechanisms for new fingers or toes appearing within a generation. So how can this phenotype arise which has thousands of bone, nerve, muscle, skin and blood vessel cells? That's the question Lange was asking. His publication with Gerd. B. Müller about the knowledge of mankind on polydactyly in development, heredity and evolution, from antiquity until today, appeared in March 2017 in the traditional American journal The Quarterly Review of Biology. Further publications deal with the ability of the extremity to organise itself. An evo-devo-process was simulated in a computer model.
In 2018, Lange received his PhD with honors at the University of Vienna in the field of evolutionary biology.
As a biologist, he gives lectures on complex epigenetic evo-devo processes in Germany and abroad. Also the (non-)biological future human evolution is a preferred lecture topic from him. In the context of the study of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis Lange met a lot of internationally acknowledged researchers. Some of them were interviewed by him in his latest book. He loves the mountains, passionately plays romantic piano music and lives as author and science journalist in the south of Munich. Lange has three grown children.
