Dr. Steve Running Chosen For E.O. Wilson Award
Steve Running, Regents Professor of Ecology at The University of Montana,
is among six to receive the first-ever Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Technology Pioneer Award. The awards honor those whose scientific discoveries, inventions or work has helped advance the biodiversity of life on Earth.
Running was chosen for the E.O. Wilson award for his pioneering and seminal scientific work with climatology, global warming and other aspects of atmospheric science.
“Global ecologists have struggled for many decades to bring biology to the same scales as the atmospheric and ocean sciences,” Running said. “Our mapping at UM of daily photosynthesis with NASA satellites achieves some of that goal. I am pleased for (the award) to celebrate that success, and I’m especially honored to receive it personally from E.O. Wilson.”
Wilson, known as the “father of biodiversity,” presented his namesake awards at a dinner
Thursday, April 9. The award recipients also were also introduced by Wilson at a public ceremony
at which Wilson received MSU’s Presidential Medal for Global and Visionary Leadership.
Other recipients of the E.O. Wilson award are David Ward, MSU; Jane Lubchenco, Oregon State University; Benoit Mandelbrot, formerly of Yale University and IBM; Ignacio Rodriguez-Itrube, Princeton University; and Michael Soulé, University of California-Santa Cruz.
UM Press Release - April 2009