---
title: "Leigh Van Valen"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Leigh Van Valen"
aliases: ["Van Valen"]
first_seen: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
connects_to: ["Red Queen hypothesis","Law of Extinction (constant extinction probability)","coevolution","evolutionary biology","William Barnett (organizational Red Queen)"]
---


Evolutionary biologist (1935–2010) who proposed the Red Queen hypothesis in
his 1973 paper "A New Evolutionary Law" (*Evolutionary Theory* 1:1–30), naming
the "Law of Extinction": the observation that a taxon's probability of
extinction is roughly constant over time, independent of how long it has
already survived. He is the biology-side anchor of the vault's cross-domain
tracking of the Red Queen as a donor metaphor — the specific, quantitative
(constant, age-independent hazard) claim against which looser "run to stay in
place" borrowings are measured. His 1973 primary has not yet been read in the
vault; the constant-extinction-probability attribution currently rests on a
Tier 4 definitional source pending that read.

## References
- [[claim-red-queen-hypothesis-names-running-to-stay-in-place]] · [[claim-barnett-applied-red-queen-to-organizational-competition]]
- [[claim-icle-invokes-red-queen-as-carroll-metaphor-not-van-valen-formalism]] · [[claim-icle-grounds-competition-for-the-market-in-industrial-organization-economics]] · [[observation-no-formal-test-maps-semiconductor-node-races-onto-van-valens-constant-hazard]]
- Question: [[question-does-competition-for-the-market-map-onto-red-queen-extinction-probability]]