 | Peter H. Raven |
Two of the nation’s leading biological theorists, Peter H. Raven and
Edward O. Wilson, will conduct a fireside chat on “The Future of Life
on Earth” on Wednesday, Oct. 17, at 5:30 p.m. in Sprague Hall, 470 College
St.
T H I S
Museum honorees to ponder
‘The Future of Life on Earth’
Yale trustee Edward P. Bass will moderate the discussion, which is free and open
to the public. The program is sponsored by Yale’s Peabody Museum of Natural
History.
Prior to the panel, Provost Andrew Hamilton will present introductory remarks,
and Peabody Director Michael J. Donoghue will present the museum’s highest
honor, the Addison Emery Verrill Medal, to Raven and Wilson. The award recognizes
outstanding achievement in the natural sciences.
Botanist Raven is a world-renowned conservationist and expert on the rainforest.
Time magazine declared him a “Hero of the Planet” for “doing
extraordinary things to preserve and protect the environment.” He is also
one of the world’s leading authorities on plant evolution. He is currently
the Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Raven also serves as director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, where he has
transformed the garden into one of the world’s leading plant conservation
centers.
In order to avert a mass extinction of living organisms caused by the mushrooming
human population and by human carelessness and commerce, Raven advocates bringing
about an “age of biology,” in which humans strive to understand the
diversity of the world’s living organisms and use the properties of those
organisms as a means to achieve sustainability and conserve biodiversity. Through
Raven’s efforts, major programs are now underway to inventory the diversity
of China, Madagascar, Ecuador and many other biodiversity “hotspots.”
Edward O. Wilson
Wilson is a pioneering environmentalist who has discovered hundreds of new species
and worked to educate the public about the ecological consequences of human behavior. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner,
he is often called “the father of biodiversity.” He is also the world’s
leading authority on ants. Wilson is currently Professor Emeritus of Biology at Harvard and
honorary curator in entomology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.
According to Wilson, it is vital “to settle humanity down before we wreck
the planet.” In his bestselling book, “The Diversity of Life,” he
warned of a possible “sixth extinction,” noting that the fifth one
wiped out the dinosaurs. He insists that humans need to preserve what it is now
destroying, those “creepy-crawlies and weeds that create the air and soil,” without
which “the terrestrial ecosystems of the world would collapse and make
human life unsustainable.” Wilson has also recently spearheaded “The
Encyclopedia of Life” project, which is designed to provide internet access
to information on every species on Earth.
Raven and Wilson received honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Yale University
in 1998 and 2006 respectively, and each counts the National Medal of Science
among a long list of awards and honors.
Awarded by the Curatorial Board of the Peabody Museum, the Verrill Medal was established in 1959 to honor Addison Emery
Verrill (1839-1926), Yale’s first professor of zoology and one of the 19th-century’s
most renowned zoologists. Through Verrill’s efforts, the Peabody’s
zoological collections became one of the most important in the United States.
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Campus Notes
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