14-Nov
2002
DUBLIN, IRELAND. NOVEMBER
2002.
The World Cultural Council presented the
2002 "Albert Einstein" World Award
for Science to Prof. Daniel Janzen, Professor
of Biology, Department of Biology at University
of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. The Award
Ceremony took place in Dublin, Ireland, the
host being Trinity College of the University
of Dublin.
The “Albert
Einstein” World Award for Science has been established as a means of recognition
and as an incentive to scientific and technological
research and development. It takes into
special consideration research that has
brought true benefit and well-being to
mankind.
This
recognition made by the members of the
Interdisciplinary Committee of the World
Cultural Council to Prof. Janzen is due
to his many contributions in the field
of Biological Sciences. He is also a renowned
educator who has applied his fundamental
knowledge of biology to the issue of the
conservation of natural resources, in particular,
the conservation of tropical biodiversity.
It
is a prize granted to Prof. Janzen for
his productive trajectory related to the
work done in the environmental sciences
and for his contribution to the scientific
legacy of the world.
In
the field of biological sciences, Prof.
Janzen is one of those rare academics who
puts theory into practice, in this case
the practice of habitat conservation. His
career has focussed on the complex interactions
observed between plants and the animals
that use them as food sources. These interactions
are crucial for the stability of ecosystems
and are constantly spurring on the evolution
of both interacting partners.
Prof.
Janzen was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
USA, in 1939. He attended the University
of Minnesota in 1961, and he received his
Ph.D in Biology in 1965 at the University
of California, Berkeley. He began his professional
life collecting butterflies in Veracruz,
Mexico in the early 1950s, and did his
thesis research in the same place ten years
later. From 1965 to 1986, Janzen was a
key figure in the design and execution
of model field experiments and case studies
in tropical field ecology, with a special
emphasis on tropical animal-plant interactions.
As a result of these studies, Prof.
Janzen has received numerous academic honours.
He is a member of the National Academy
of Sciences, winner of the Crafoord Prize
in Biology (from the Swedish Royal Academy
of Sciences), and winner of a MacArthur
Fellowship. His career is a role model
for combining world-class scholarship with
dedicated efforts to improve the state
of humankind.
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