by Matthew Cobb
This year’s crop of newly-minted Fellows of the Royal Society (FRS) has just been announced, and I am overjoyed to see that Steve Jones (University College, London) has been given the highest scientific honour the UK can bestow. The citation says:
Steve Jones is our Number One communicator on evolution and on many other aspects of genetics. His distinguished experimental studies on the ecological genetics of snails and fruit flies have given him the authority to build an enviable career in public lecturing, radio and television, as a newspaper columnist and in writing hugely successful and influential books. Through his balanced but incisive commentaries the public has come to trust him to interpret the breathtaking advances in genetics and genetic modification that have characterised the last couple of decades and that continue to perplex and worry many non-scientists.
What they don’t say is that he’s a lovely bloke, and incredibly generous with his time, to both students and colleagues alike.
Also on the list is Jerry’s good pal evolutionary biologist Russell Lande, from Imperial College, London, who only a few months ago scooped the Balzan Prize. Russell’s citation reads:
Russell Lande is one of the world’s leading population biologists. He pioneered the field of quantitative genetics and phenotypic evolution in natural populations with a series of theoretical papers on mutation and maintenance of heritable variation, sexual dimorphism and sexual selection, life history evolution, phenotypic plasticity, plant mating systems, and the measurement of natural selection on correlated characters. His concepts of the G matrix and the selection gradient are now standard tools in evolutionary biology. He is an expert in stochastic demography and population viability, and achieved international prominence as a conservation biologist for both his conceptual and applied contributions.
I don’t know Russell personally, but I’ve tried to read his work and his 1981 paper ‘Models of speciation by sexual selection on polygenic traits’ (open access here) impressed me no end at the time, when I was a PhD student.
I’m sure Jerry will want to say something about the great recognition bestowed on these two people – both good friends of his. For my part, I will raise a glass of good red wine to both of them, and to evolutionary biology!
Jerry’s update: Yes, these are both good friends of mine, and since it’s the FRS, let me say that I’m enormously chuffed that these two have garnered this long-overdue hono(u)r.
I did field work with Steve in Death Valley when I was a postdoc, and continued to work with him over the years, as well as finding frequent and hospitable refuge in his Camden Square home. He’s an honest, unpretentious, and erudite man, with a wide-ranging knowledge of literature and evolutionary genetics, as well as an unstinting love of snails.
Russ, although American, now has a Royal Society Professorship at Imperial College London. He was in grad school with me, and intimidated us all with his brains. His penchant for nonselective models of evolution earned him the nickname “Dr. Drift,” which he retains to this day. Having nabbed the extremely prestigious Balzan Prize last November, Russ certainly deserves membership in the U.S.’s National Academy of Sciences, and they’d better elect him pronto! Are you reading this, Drs. Hillis and Felsenstein?
Congrats to my two pals for being able to append “FRS” (sarcastically known as “Former Research Scientist”) to their names.
I read Steve Jones’s articles in the telegraph avidly. mucha common science sense. Congratulations
“lovely bloke”
Hmmm, that would get you beat up in the US. 😉
Russ is a nice guy and very deserving. I met him several times in graduate school and then when a post-doc at UofO.
two truly great human beings
How nice, but do they have an “FCD”?
“FCD” Err, “Friend of Coyne (Doctor)” ?
Or is FCD an Americanism that didn’t swim the Pond?
Me … I’m still trying to figure out how to get an FRS. I thought I’d got Dad trumped when I got my FGS, but he’d sneaked in an FLS on top of his long-standing FRSC. And hadn’t told me. Cad!
(I don’t know what the convention in America is, but in Britain, if you’re a member of multiple learned societies, then you list them after your name in the societies’ order of precedence, oldest first. So my FGS (1807) trumps Dad’s FRSC (1980, but with antecedents starting in 1849 ; trumped either way). He sneaked a card out of his sleeve with FLS (1788) on it. But with a reasonable amount of work, I may be able to sneak a 1780 card into my deck in a few years.
Intellectual bingo! The game the whole family can play?
Or is it “Snap!” ? Perhaps we’d better work out the rules before this becomes silly. Edit : “sillier”.
Keep inspecting that gravel – you never know what will turn up!
Hearty congratulations to two very deserving new Fellows! As far as the U.S. National Academy of Sciences goes, people should realize that the electoral system there has some flaws (which are acknowledged and they have tried to fix). If field X has many people already in the NAS, and field Y does not, then new electees are more likely to be from field X. Them as has, gets.
This affects theoreticians versus experimentalists among evolutionary biologists: there is a relative lack of theoreticians. It also affects molecular biologists versus everybody else: there are many molecular biologists.
It would be nice to report that the National Academy of Sciences reflected a careful and balanced assessment of people’s contributions. But once you see the system at work you would be astonished that anybody good ever gets elected.
In this case the Royal Society did a lot better — it is wonderful to hear that Russell Lande and Steve Jones were honored.
Well, Paul Nurse, the head of the RS, is an equally fine fellow.
Yes, blooming well done to both. I got Steve Jones to sign a copy of his book Darwin’s Island – thereby lowering the resale vale he quipped with his usual dry wit!