Joe Felsenstein is a world-leader in evolutionary genetics and phylogenies. He received a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Chicago and joined the Department of Genetics at the University of Washington in 1968. He currently holds positions in the Departments of Genome Sciences, Biology, Computer Science & Engineering, and Statistics at UW.

Felsenstein is the author of the widely used PHYLIP package of programs for inferring phylogenies. He has published over 100 research articles and is the author of the book Inferring Phylogenies published in 2004. Reviews of this book call it "an instant classic" and "a milestone for evolutionary biology in general, and phylogenetics in particular".

Felsenstein served as the President of the Society for the Study of Evolution in 1993, and has received numerous awards, including: election to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992; the Sewall Wright Award from the American Society of Naturalists in 1993 which recognizes fundamental contributions to the conceptual unification of the biological sciences; election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1999; the Weldon Memorial Prize from Oxford University in 2000; the President's Award for Excellence in Systematics from the Society of Systematic Biology in 2002 and the Darwin-Wallace Medal from the Linnean Society of London in 2008. He also holds a honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.