Masatoshi Nei (根井正利 Nei Masatoshi) is a population geneticist currently affiliated with the Department of Biology at Temple University as a Carnell Professor. He was, until recently, Evan Pugh Professor of Biology at Pennsylvania State University and Director of the Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics and had been there from 1990 to 2015.
He was born in 1931 in Miyazaki Prefecture, on Kyūshū Island, Japan. He was associate professor and professor of biology at Brown University from 1969 to 1972 and professor of population genetics at the Center for Demographic and Population Genetics, University of Texas at Houston, from 1972 to 1990. He is a theoretical population geneticist and evolutionary biologist. Acting alone or working with his students, he has continuously developed statistical theories of molecular evolution taking into account discoveries in molecular biology. He has also developed concepts in evolutionary theory and advanced the theory of mutation-driven evolution
