Posted on: Sunday, April 15, 2001

UH graduate picked for top science award

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer

Gareth Nelson, a renowned scholar and University of Hawai'i graduate, has won one of the most prestigious prizes in science, the Linnean Society Medal for Zoology, for 2001.

Nelson, who received his doctorate in zoology from UH-Manoa in 1966, specializes in biogeography and evolution with a focus on marine species.

The Linnean Society of London's award, issued annually since 1888, is given to one person each year for exceptional service to science.

Nelson is to be awarded the prize May 24 at the society's anniversary meeting.

"To our knowledge, this is the highest international professional recognition ever received by one of our former students," said University of Hawai'i Zoology Department Chairman Randy Haley in an e-mail to colleagues.

Nelson's specialty is the evolution of teleosts, or bony fishes. His career and studies quickly branched into the broader field of systematics, including how fishes are related to one anther and their ancestral lines, and the history of evolutionary science.

Now a professor in the Botany Department at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Nelson has served with the American Museum of Natural History and is an adjunct professor with the City University of New York. He has written extensively on the theory of evolution.