APS Member History

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41	Name:	Dr. J. William Schopf
	Institution:	University of California, Los Angeles
	Year Elected:	1985
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1941

	William Schopf, paleobiologist and director of the University of California, Los Angeles's Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life, is an expert in the early history of life. He is the editor of Earth's Earliest Biosphere and The Proterozoic Biosphere: A Multidisciplinary Study, companion books that provide a comprehensive survey of more than four billion years of the earth's history, from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago to events that occurred a half a billion years ago. Dr. Schopf has authored more than 200 scholarly publications on the origin and evolution of life and has received many honors, including the Paleontological Society Medal, the Golden Plate Medal from the American Academy of Achievement, the Centennial Botanist Award from the Botanical Society of America, the National Academy of Sciences' Clark Thompson Medal, the National Science Foundation's Alan T. Waterman Award, and the Alexandre Ivanovich Oparin Medal from the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life. He earned his A.B. in geology from Oberlin College in 1963 and earned his A.M. in 1965 and his Ph.D. in 1968 from Harvard University. Also in 1968, he joined UCLA's faculty where he has been active in numerous councils and committees. During the late '60s and early '70s, Dr. Schopf worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, serving as a member of the Lunar Sample Preliminary Examination Team at the Johnson Space Center in Houston from 1968-71 and as the Principal Investigator of Lunar Samples for the Apollo Program from 1969-73. He has completed field work in over 20 different countries and has received support from the National Geographic Society, the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. His current research interests include the evolution of primitive Precambrian organisms; organic geochemistry of ancient sediments; evolutionary biology; atmospheric evolution; and paleobotany.

42	Name:	Dr. Neil H. Shubin
	Institution:	University of Chicago
	Year Elected:	2017
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1960

	Neil Shubin is a scientist, administrator, and writer. Throughout his career, he has been interested in understanding the great transitions of evolution. Leading expeditions around the globe in search of critical intermediate fossils, he has discovered fossil evidence for the origins of terrestrial vertebrates, mammals, frogs, salamanders and other major groups of animals. He also has revealed genetic and developmental mechanisms for these changes by using comparative laboratory-based approaches on modern animals. Linking studies of gene sequence, regulation and function with those of embryology and anatomy, Shubin has revealed deep similarities among different organs that tell of their origins. Educated at Columbia, Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley, Shubin has held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago, where he currently holds the Robert R. Bensley Distinguished Service Professorship in Anatomy. He has held administrative positions at the University of Chicago (Departmental Chair, Associate Dean, and Senior Advisor to the President), The Field Museum (Provost) and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole (Co-Director). He is the author of: Your Inner Fish, The Universe Within, and Some Assembly Required. The former won the Phi Betta Kappa Science Book Prize and the National Academy of Sciences Scientific Communication Award. Shubin has also received the Distinguished Explorer's Award of the Roy Chapman Andrews Society. Your Inner Fish appeared on PBS as a three-part miniseries. Produced by Tangled Bank Studios of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute it won numerous awards, in eluding an Emmy. Shubin is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2017.

43	Name:	Dr. Elwyn LaVerne Simons
	Institution:	Duke University
	Year Elected:	1996
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1930
	Death Date:	March 6, 2016

	Dr. Elwyn L. Simons is primarily interested in the history, general biology, and behavior of living and extinct primates. His research concerns focus on the early evolution of anthropoids in the late Eocene and early Oligocene of the Fayum Depression, Egypt; the paleoecology, dating, taphonomy, anatomy, and relationships of extinct placentals from these sites; dating, extinctions, anatomy, and relationships of giant subfossil lemurs of Madagascar; behavioral and conservation studies of extant Malagasy lemurs; and the evolutionary history and relationships of middle and late Tertiary apes, as well as Plio-Pleistocene hominids. Dr. Simons has led over 70 field expeditions to Egypt, Madagascar, India, Iran, Nepal, and Wyoming. He has held professional appointments at Yale (1960-77) and Duke Universities (1977-) and was the Director (1977-91) and Scientific Director (1991-2001) of the Duke Primate Center. He has authored nearly 300 scientific publications and is the holder of many high honors. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as many other professional associations. He was elected a "Knight of the National Order" by the government of Madagascar and has been the recipient of awards including the Charles R. Darwin Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.

44	Name:	Prof. John Maynard Smith
	Institution:	University of Sussex
	Year Elected:	1980
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	International
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1920
	Death Date:	April 19, 2004

45	Name:	Dr. George Ledyard Stebbins
	Institution:	University of California, Davis
	Year Elected:	1961
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1906
	Death Date:	January 19, 2000

46	Name:	Dr. Christopher Stringer
	Institution:	Natural History Museum, London
	Year Elected:	2019
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	International
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1947

	Christopher Stringer is the Research Leader in Human Origins at London's Natural History Museum. He is also co-director of the follow-up Pathways to Ancient Britain project. He earned his Ph.D. in 1974 and his D.Sc. 1990, both from the University of Bristol. He has spent most of his career at the Natural History Museum, first starting as a Researcher in 1973. Stringer is a leading proponent of the Out-of-Africa theory for the origin and spread of modern humans. Beginning with his seminal 1988 Science paper on the "Genetic and Fossil Evidence for the Origin of Modern Humans" (with Peter Andrews) he has worked with archaeologists, dating specialists and geneticists to further develop and refine our understanding of the evolution of our own species. He has recently formulated a modified version of this model, the Coalescent African Origin model. He carried out significant fieldwork on Neanderthals and since 2001 has directed the "Ancient Human Occupation of Britain" and "Pathways to Ancient Britain" projects, which have produced significant new findings about the spread of hominids into the British Isles. He is also the author of numerous bestselling books on human evolution including Our Human Story (with Louise Humphrey), Britain: One Million Years of the Human Story (with R Dinnis), and Homo Britannicus. He received the Royal Anthropological Institute's Rivers Memorial Medal in 2004 and the Zoological Society of London's Frink Medal in 2008. Stringer was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2023 New Year Honors for services to the understanding of human evolution. He has been a member of the Royal Society since 2004 and is a member of the Society of Antiquaries. Stringer was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2019.

47	Name:	Dr. Keith S. Thomson
	Institution:	American Philosophical Society; University of Oxford
	Year Elected:	2011
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Living
	Birth Date:	1938

	Keith Stewart Thomson served as the American Philosophical Society’s Executive Officer from July 1, 2012, to June 12, 2017. He graduated from the University of Birmingham (UK) in 1960 and then moved to Harvard University, earning a Ph.D. in biology in 1963. His dissertation was on the evolution of air-breathing at the transition between fishes and the first land animals. He continued to study both fossil and living fishes when he returned to England as NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at University College London (1963-1965) before going to Yale University (1965-1987), first as a faculty member of the Biology Department, where he was also appointed Curator of Fishes in the Peabody Museum of Natural History, and later as its Director and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. At Yale his studies of ancient fishes inevitably drew him both to the “living fossil” lungfishes and the extraordinary living coelacanth. In 1966 he obtained for study the first fresh specimen of the coelacanth from the Comoro Islands (Living Fossil, 1991). His overall goal was to understand fossils in the same physiological, biomechanical, and ecological terms as we study living animals. In the process he published more than 200 papers on subjects ranging from the evolution of cell size and DNA content in lungfish and intracranial mechanics in the coelacanth and its fossil relatives, to the origin of the tetrapod middle ear and the body shape and swimming mechanics of sharks. From an early interest in embryology, it was but a short step to study the roles that developmental processes play in evolution, and to writing Morphogenesis and Evolution (1988). As an evolutionary biologist he naturally became interested in Charles Darwin and that led to a broader interest in the history of science (for example HMS Beagle, the Story of Darwin’s Ship, 1995). He moved to Philadelphia as President and CEO of the Academy of Natural Sciences (1987-1995), which included heading a successful capital campaign for a new library building and a research laboratory on Chesapeake Bay. In 1996 he was appointed University Distinguished Scientist-in-Residence at the New School for Social Research in New York City, where he introduced the first science curriculum and taught both biology and history of science. In 1998 he was elected to be the first director (in modern times) of the Oxford University Museum, Professor of Natural History, and a Fellow of Kellogg College. At Oxford he was heavily involved in the creation of a new national program of funding for regional (i.e. not state-funded) museums. After retiring in 2003 he returned to Philadelphia to write, and was based at the American Philosophical Society as Senior Research Fellow. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2011. His recent books include: The Watch on the Heath (published in the USA as Before Darwin) and Fossils: a Very Short Introduction, both in 2005; The Legacy of the Mastodon (2008); A Passion for Nature: Thomas Jefferson and Natural History (2008); The Young Charles Darwin (2009); Jefferson’s Shadow: The Story of his Science (2012), and Private Doubt, Public Dilemma (2015).

48	Name:	Dr. Phillip V. Tobias
	Institution:	University of Witwatersrand
	Year Elected:	1996
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	International
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1925
	Death Date:	June 7, 2012

	Phillip Tobias was one of South Africa's most honoured and decorated scientists and a leading expert on human prehistoric ancestors. His research was mainly in the fields of paleoanthropology and the human biology of African people. He studied the Kalahari San, the Tonga peoples of Zambia and numerous races of Southern Africa. Phillip Tobias was best known for his research on hominid fossils and human evolution, having studied and described hominid fossils from Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Zambia. His best known work was on the hominids of East Africa, particularly those of the Olduvai Gorge. Collaborating with Louis Leakey, he identified, described and named the new species Homo habilis. Cambridge University Press published two volumes on the fossils of Homo habilis from the Olduvai Gorge. Dr. Tobias is also closely linked with the archaeological excavation at the Sterkfontein site, a research programme he initiated in 1966. Dr. Tobias holds B.Sc. (Hons), MBBCh, Ph.D. and D.Sc. Degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, where he spent his entire student and working career. He chaired the Department of Anatomy and Human Biology for 32 years and served as Professor and Head of Anatomy and Human Biology until his retirement in 1993. He is believed to have taught over 10,000 students during his 50 years at the medical school. Dr. Tobias published over 600 journal articles and authored or co-authored 33 books and edited or co-edited eight others. He has received honorary degrees from seventeen universities and other academic institutions in South Africa, the United States of America, Canada and Europe. He was elected as a fellow, associate or honorary member of over 28 learned societies. These include being elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. He was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1996. Among the many medals, awards and prizes he has received are the Balzan International Prize for Physical Anthropology, the Charles R. Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (1997) and the Walter Sisulu Special Contribution Award (2007) in recognition of his efforts to promote the ideals of the City of Johannesburg. Because of his renown, Dr. Tobias could have worked just about anywhere, but he chose to stay in South Africa even though he and other researchers there were sometimes shunned by scientists from other countries and barred from international conferences as a show of condemnation of South Africa's apartheid policy, which he, too, opposed. He made fiery anti-apartheid speeches to academic audiences and crowds of demonstrators at the university and said that scientists in particular had to speak out against segregationist policies based on false ideas about racial differences. Phillip V. Tobias died on June 7, 2012, at the age of 86 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

49	Name:	Dr. James W. Valentine
	Institution:	University of California, Berkeley
	Year Elected:	2009
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1926
	Death Date:	April 7, 2023

	James W. Valentine is the Professor Emeritus of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and the Faculty Curator Emeritus at the University of California Museum of Paleontology. He previously taught at the University of Missouri, the University of California, Davis, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. James Valentine has made important contributions to evolutionary history by combining paleontology with data from genetics, zoology, botany and other life sciences. He conducted groundbreaking research on the Cambrian Explosion and was among the first paleontologists to use molecular data to investigate the origin of major Metazoan body plans. His papers with Eldridge Moores are among the foundation documents in the plate tectonics revolution and helped establish the University of California, Davis geology department as a leader in the field. In his seminal work Evolutionary Paleoecology of the Marine Biosphere, Valentine employs a hierarchical approach to integrate studies on the environmental and climatic factors that have regulated biotic diversity, and he continues these studies today. A dedicated scholar of the life and work of Charles Darwin, Valentine has built a collection of virtually every edition of Charles Darwin in every language, including 26 of 29 British first editions. He was awarded the Paleontology Society Medal in 1996. He was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.

50	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.

51	Name:	Dr. Edward O. Wilson
	Institution:	Harvard University; E.O. Wilson Foundation
	Year Elected:	1976
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1929
	Death Date:	December 26, 2021

	Edward O. Wilson is Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard University. A preeminent biological theorist, he earned B.S. and M.A. degrees in biology from the University of Alabama and his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University. He joined Harvard's faculty in 1956 and distinguished himself as a researcher, professor of zoology and curator in entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Dr. Wilson conducted pioneering work on chemical communication from the 1950s through the 1970s. His accomplishments include the first comprehensive account of pheromones in ants, and (with Bossert) the first evolutionary analysis of the physical and chemical properties of pheromones; the creation (with MacArthur) of the theory of island biogeography, a basic part of modern ecology and conservation biology; the creation of the discipline of sociobiology, in 1975; and the first modern syntheses of knowledge of social insects, in 1971, and (with Hölldobler) of ants in particular, in 1990. Dr. Wilson's current work continues to focus on entomological and environmental research. Two of E.O. Wilson's 25 books have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize - On Human Nature (1978) and The Ants (1990), co-authored with Hölldobler. His acclaimed The Diversity of Life (1992), which brought together knowledge of the magnitude of biodiversity and the threats to it, had a major public impact. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998) draws together the sciences, humanities, and the arts into a broad study of human knowledge, while The Future of Life (2002) offers a plan for saving Earth's biological heritage. Among Dr. Wilson's recent volumes is a monograph including 337 species new to science, Pheidole in the New World: A Hyperdiverse Ant Genus (2003), another book with Hölldobler, Superorganism (2008), and The Social Conquest of Earth (2012). In 2010 he wrote his first novel, Anthill, which was followed in 2013 by Letters to a Young Scientist. He was founder and also serves as honorary chairman of the Encyclopedia of Life, an online resource (www.eol.org) that aims to provide detailed information on every species known to science. The project's first 30,000 pages went online in February 2008, with the remaining 1.77 million pages predicted to be available within the next decade. Dr. Wilson is the recipient of over one hundred awards recognizing his international contributions to science and humanity. These include the National Medal of Science (1976), the Japan International Prize for Biology (1993), the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (1990), the Franklin Medal of the American Philosophical Society (1999), the Brookly Botanic Garden Visionary Award (2012) and the Cosmos Prize of the Japan’s Expo ’90 Foundation (2012). The citation of the APS award reads "in recognition of the great contributions this scientist has made through his research on ants to a better understanding of their societal relationships. Using exacting methods he has produced a new understanding of the processes which produce man's creative achievements by subjecting them to the rigorous analyses used in studying the physical and chemical characteristics of ants and other species." E.O. Wilson was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in 1976.

52	Name:	Lord Solly Zuckerman
	Institution:	Bath Institute of Medical Engineering
	Year Elected:	1965
	Class:	2. Biological Sciences
	Subdivision:	203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology
	Residency:	International
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1904
	Death Date:	4/1/93

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