Subdivision
| • | 203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology | [X] |
| | 1 | Name: | Dr. May R. Berenbaum | | | Institution: | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign | | | Year Elected: | 1996 | | | Class: | 2. Biological Sciences | | | Subdivision: | 203. Evolution & Ecology, Systematics, Population Genetics, Paleontology, and Physical Anthropology | | | Residency: | Resident | | | Living? : |
Living
| | | Birth Date: | 1953 | | | | | | |
May Berenbaum is one of the most original biologists in the country. An ingenious experimentalist, she has long studied the interactions of two of the primary organisms on the planet: insects and plants. In doing so, she has uncovered the mechanisms by which plants fend off insects and insects circumvent these barriers. A prolific author and exquisite speaker, she has written five books, including the classic Bugs in the System: Insects and Their Impact on Human Affairs (1994). Dr. Berenbaum received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1980 and currently serves as a professor and head of the department of entomology at the University of Illinois. She was one of the youngest biologists in the National Academy of Sciences at the time of her election.
She has been honored with many awards, including the George Mercer and the Robert H. MacArthur Awards of the Ecological Society of America, the E.O. Wilson Naturalist Award from the American Society of Naturalists, and Silverstei-Simeone Award from the International Society for Chemical Ecology. She won the Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award from the American Association of the Advancement of Science in 2009, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 2011, and the National Medal of Science in 2014. Dr. Berenbaum's weekly radio program on insects commands a wide audience, as does her annual "Insect Horror Film Festival", which draws aficionados from all over the world. In 2018 it was announced that she would become Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, beginning January 1, 2019. | |
| 2 | 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. | |
| 3 | 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. | |
| 4 | 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. | |
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