| 1 | Name: | Dr. David B. Wake | |
| Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | ||
| Year Elected: | 1996 | ||
| Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1936 | ||
| Death Date: | April 29, 2021 | ||
David B. Wake had been at Berkeley since 1969, and since July, 2003, was Professor Emeritus of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught evolutionary biology and conducted research in that field. He was recalled for research duty as Professor of the Graduate School. He spent the first 17 years of his life in rural South Dakota, graduated from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and received his doctoral education at the University of Southern California under the sponsorship of Jay M. Savage. Dr. Wake was on the faculty of the University of Chicago before moving to Berkeley. His initial appointments at Berkeley were in the Department of Zoology and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, where he continues to serve as a curator of Herpetology. In 1972 he became director of the museum, serving continuously until 1999, when he resumed his position as Curator of Herpetology. From 1998-2002 Dr. Wake was Chairman of the Faculty Advisory Committee for the Systemwide University of California Natural Reserve system. He was the first holder of the John and Margaret Gompertz Chair in Integrative Biology (1991-97) and was the Faculty Research Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004. Dr. Wake's research career has been driven by the general question of how lineages diversify at different hierarchical levels during their evolution. He uses molecular, cellular, tissue, whole organismal and populational approaches to study development, functional morphology, neuroanatomy, population biology, geographical ecology, phylogeography, systematics, and conservation biology. The research focus is amphibians, especially salamanders. Special attention has been given to the largest family, the lungless salamanders (Plethodontidae), the only salamander lineage that has occupied tropical environments, all in the New World. Explanations for the tropical invasion have led to generalizations about the nature of lineage diversification, factors responsible for structural and functional innovation, and adaptive radiations. In his systematic research more than 50 new species have been discovered and described, including ten from California alone. Dr. Wake has authored more than 340 scientific papers and books. The plight of amphibians around the world and implications of their decline and disappearance were first highlighted by Wake at a National Research Council workshop in 1990. He was a co-founder and first director of the international Task Force on Declining Amphibian Populations of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, and was an active participant in the recently concluded Global Amphibian Assessment. A successful website, AmphibiaWeb, was launched in 2000 under his leadership, and he continues to direct it. His interests in this area and as a curator led to new developments in the field of biodiversity informatics and he was Principal Investigator for HerpNET, a recently concluded five year, NSF sponsored program in which a consortium of 36 institutions is developing a distributed database for more than 5 million specimens of amphibians and reptiles around the world. He is also a Principal Investigator of a five-year project in NSF's Annotated Tree of Life Program, AmphibiaTree, being conducted by scientists at four major universities. More than 40 graduate students have received doctoral degrees under Dr. Wake's guidance, and he has sponsored many postdoctoral scholars as well. He was elected president of the American Society of Zoologists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the American Society of Naturalists, and served as editor of the journal Evolution. At the University of Chicago he won the Quantrell Award for excellence in teaching. In 2002-03 he was Alexander Agassiz Visiting Professor at Harvard University. A former Guggenheim Fellow, Dr. Wake also was the recipient of the Outstanding Herpetologist award (Herpetologists League), the Joseph Grinnell Medal (Museum of Vertebrate Zoology), the Henry S. Fitch Award (American Society of Ichythyologists and Herpetologists) and the Joseph Leidy Medal (Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia) for his scientific work. He was awarded the Berkeley Citation in 2006. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and the California Academy of Sciences. Dr. Wake is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Science, and the National Academy of Sciences. He died on April 29, 2021. | |||