According to a biography by Alan R. Rogers, in the 1970s Harpending pioneered the study of the relationship between genetics and geography, developing methods that are still in use. He also overturned the prevailing understanding of group selection, by showing that group selection is most likely to operate when there is strong gene flow between groups, rather than when they are isolated from one another.Rogers, Alan R. Henry C. Harpending: 1944-2016." Biographical Memoirs. National Academy of Sciences, 2018. Harpending also developed the approach of analyzing populations using R-matrix methods, and together with Trefor Jonkin, wrote the most highly cited chapter in the 1973 handbook Methods and Theory of Anthropological Genetics.Crawford, Michael H. "History and Evolution of Anthropological Genetics". In A Companion to Anthropological Genetics (2019), edited by Dennis H. O'Rourke, pp. 3-15.
