Honorary Membership

Chair

Members

  • Douglas A. Kelt
  • Eileen A. Lacey
  • Michael A. Mares
  • Robert S. Sikes

 

History and Mission

The Honorary Membership Committee was formed in 1957.  Its function is to recommend candidates for Honorary Membership to the Board of Directors and to the general membership of the Society.  Honorary Members are elected in recognition of long-term (i.e., >10 years) distinguished service to the science of mammalogy.  It is considered the Society’s highest honor.

Responsibilities

The Honorary Membership Committee comprises the five most-recent Past Presidents, being chaired for a two-year term by its second-most senior member.  The Committee considers nominations tendered by both its own members as well as those received from outside the committee, assembles supporting documentation, and evaluates the qualifications of the candidates.  After deliberation, the Committee forwards to the Board of Directors the name(s) of nominees deemed by at least 4 members to meet the high standards of this recognition.  Nominees that are recommended by at least 75% of those Directors voting will be presented to Members for their majority approval at the annual Members’ Meeting.

Procedures

Persons who wish to nominate a candidate for Honorary Membership should first review the list of previous recipients to gauge the merits of their nominee.  Nominators are encouraged to consult with the Chair of the Committee during their preparation of nomination materials.  Nominees need not be members of ASM or citizens of the United States.  All parties involved should treat the nomination procedure in strict confidence.  A completed nomination shall consist of: (1) a letter of nomination from an ASM member, (2) three supporting letters, and (3) a curriculum vitae. These materials should be transmitted electronically to the Committee’s Chair no later than 1 March. 

“Distinguished service to the science of mammalogy” is generally interpreted as including one or more components of the following non-exhaustive list.  Because Honorary Membership recognizes sustained, often career-long contributions to mammalogy, the scope and impact of a nominee’s efforts are expected to be broad. To increase the strength of nomination packets, nominators and letter-writers are encouraged to comment on as many of these aspects of a nominee’s career as relevant as well as highlight any other significant accomplishments and contributions to mammalogy that are deserving of recognition.

  1. Significant, sustained research contributions. This is not just numbers of publications, but work that has substantially changed our conceptual or empirical understanding of mammalian biology. Although this is often correlated with impressive productivity, the quality and impact of the nominee’s research is the primary consideration.
  2. Significant contributions to our understanding of specific mammalian lineages. This consists of building knowledge regarding specific subsets of mammals, such as entire faunas or evolutionary lineages (e.g., bats, ungulates, shrews) of broad geographic distribution. This focus is deserving of recognition if an individual has substantially changed our understanding of a clade or larger phylogenetic unit.  The focus should be on more than one species and should make important conceptual advances about mammals in ways that open up these clades for use in future research programs, or raise public as well as scientific awareness of a group that aids in its conservation.
  3. Significant contributions to the growth of mammalogy in a specific geographic region. This consists of significant, sustained, and often unsupported efforts to build or expand the discipline of mammalogy within individual countries or geographic regions. These efforts may be especially challenging in underserved parts of the world. Examples would include individuals who have developed the discipline of mammalogy or substantially increased its strength within a country or region through training of colleagues and students, creation of university programs, or through interactions with government and conservation authorities.
  4. Significant roles in developing or ensuring infrastructure essential for mammalogy, including museums and research collections. This does not refer simply to being a curator but instead recognizes individuals who have founded or developed research institutions, or who have contributed substantially to infrastructure advances, including electronic infrastructure such as creation of globally valued digital databases or new analytical software and approaches, that have enhanced the productivity of mammalogists in general.
  5. Service to professional societies. Service to ASM and other relevant professional societies is a vital contribution to mammalogy. Such service may be an important component of a nominee’s record and will influence consideration but, in general, is not itself sufficient for election to Honorary Membership. Special instances of outstanding service to a professional society that has had broader impacts on mammalogy could be an exception.

HONORARY MEMBERS conferred in recognition of a distinguished career in service to mammalogy

1910-1919

  • 1919—Joel Asaph Allen, American Museum of Natural History

1920-1929

  • 1921—Edouard-Louis Trouessart, Museum of Natural History of Angers and Museum National d’Historie Naturelle, Paris, France
  • 1928—M. R. Oldfield Thomas, British Museum (Natural History), London, England
  • 1928—Max Weber, University of Amsterdam and University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
  • 1929—Henry Fairfield Osborn, American Museum of Natural History; Columbia University; and Princeton University

1930-1939

  • 1930—C. Hart Merriam, U. S. Biological Survey
  • 1930—Edward W. Nelson, U. S. Biological Survey
  • 1936—Alfred W. Anthony, San Diego Museum of Natural History
  • 1936—William Berryman Scott, Princeton University
  • 1937—Leonhard Stejneger, U. S. National Museum

1940-1949

  • 1941—Gerrit S. Miller, Jr., U. S. National Museum
  • 1941—Ernest E. Thompson Seton, independent writer and artist
  • 1942—Marcus Ward Lyon, Jr., U. S. National Museum; Howard University; George Washington University; and South Bend Clinic in Indiana
  • 1947—Rudolph M. Anderson, National Museum of Canada
  • 1947—Angel Cabrera Latorre, National Museum of Natural History, Madrid, Spain; National University of La Plata and La Plata Museum, La Plata, Argentina; and University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina

1950-1959

  • 1951—A. Brazier Howell, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Johns Hopkins Medical School
  • 1951—Theodore S. Palmer, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
  • 1952—Hartley H. T. Jackson, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
  • 1952—Edward A. Preble, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Nature Magazine
  • 1954—William K. Gregory, American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University
  • 1954—Walter P. Taylor, University of California, Berkeley; U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service; University of Arizona; Texas A&M University; Oklahoma State University; and Claremont Graduate School of the Claremont Colleges
  • 1955—Harold E. Anthony, American Museum of Natural History
  • 1956—Lee R. Dice, University of Michigan
  • 1956—Albert R. Shadle, Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo and Cornell University
  • 1959—Francis Harper, Boston Society of Natural History; independent scholar, researcher, and writer
  • 1959—Nagmaichi Kuroda, Ministry of Internal Affairs; Department of the Imperial Household; and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Tokyo, Japan

1960-1969

  • 1962—Magnus A. Degerbøl, Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 1963—Vladimir G. Heptner, Zoological Museum of Moscow State University, Moscow, U. S. S. R.
  • 1963—Remington Kellogg, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U. S. National Museum
  • 1963—Tracy I. Storer, University of California, Davis, and University of California, Berkeley
  • 1964—E. Raymond Hall, University of Kansas and University of California, Berkeley
  • 1964—Stanley P. Young, U. S. Biological Survey and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
  • 1965—William J. Hamilton, Jr., Cornell University
  • 1966—Erna Mohr, Zoologisches Museum and Institut, Hamburg, Germany
  • 1966—Klaus Zimmerman, Natural History Museum of the Humboldt Institut, Berlin, Germany
  • 1968—William H. Burt, University of Michigan and California Institute of Technology
  • 1968—William B. Davis, Texas A&M University
  • 1969—George Gaylord Simpson, Harvard University; American Museum of Natural History; and Columbia University

1970-1979

  • 1970—Robert T. Orr, California Academy of Sciences
  • 1971—Stephen D. Durrant, University of Utah
  • 1972—Kazimierz Petrusewicz, Institute of Ecology, Polish Academy of Sciences; University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
  • 1973—Charles S. Elton, University of Oxford, Oxford, Englan
  • 1976—Emmet T. Hooper, Museum of Zoology, University of Michigan
  • 1976—Vladimir E. Sokolov, Moscow State University; Department of General Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences; A. N. Severtzov Institute of Animal Evolutionary Morphology and Ecology, Moscow, U. S. S. R.
  • 1979—Oliver P. Pearson, University of California, Berkeley

1980-1989

  • 1981—Victor B. Scheffer, U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
  • 1982—Donald F. Hoffmeister, University of Illinois and University of Kansas
  • 1982—Z. Kazimierz Pucek, Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
  • 1983—Björn O. L. Kurtén, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
  • 1985—John Edwards Hill, British Museum (Natural History), London, England
  • 1986—Randolph L. Peterson, Royal Ontario Museum and University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  • 1986—Bernardo Villa-Ramirez, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, D.F., México, México
  • 1987—Francis Petter, Museum National d’Historie Naturelle, Paris, France
  • 1988—XIA Wuping, Northwest Plateau Institute of Biology, Academia Sinica, China

1990-1999

  • 1990—Karl F. Koopman, American Museum of Natural History; Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia; Chicago Museum of Natural History
  • 1991—Philip Hershkovitz, Field Museum of Natural History
  • 1992—Sydney Anderson, American Museum of Natural History
  • 1992—J. Knox Jones, Jr., Texas Tech University and University of Kansas
  • 1993—John N. Calaby, CSIRO, Canberra, ACT, Australia
  • 1993—James N. Layne, Cornell University; University of Florida; and Archbold Biological Station
  • 1994—James S. Findley, University of New Mexico
  • 1995—William Z. Lidicker, Jr., Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley
  • 1996—Robert S. Hoffmann, Smithsonian Institution; National Museum of Natural History; University of Kansas; University of Montana
  • 1997—J. Ticul Álvarez-Solózano, Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biológicas, México, D.F., México
  • 1998—Wang Sung, Academia Sinica, Beijing, China
  • 1999—Paul S. Martin, University of Arizona

2000-2009

  • 2000—Franklin H. Bronson, University of Texas, Austin
  • 2001—James L. Patton, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California, Berkeley
  • 2001—J. Mary Taylor, Cleveland Museum of Natural History; Oregon Regional Primate Research Center; University of British Columbia; and Wellesley College
  • 2001—Patricia A. Woolley, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  • 2002—Hugh H. Genoways, University of Nebraska State Museum; Carnegie Museum of Natural History; and Texas Tech University
  • 2002—Eviatar Nevo, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
  • 2002—Don E. Wilson, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service
  • 2003—Jennifer U. M. Jarvis, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, Republic of South Africa
  • 2003—Clyde Jones, Texas Tech University; U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service; and Tulane University
  • 2003—Lim Boo Liat, Institute for Medical Research and University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 2004—Guy G. Musser, American Museum of Natural History
  • 2004—David C. D. Happold, Division of Botany and Zoology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia
  • 2005—Robert J. Baker, Texas Tech University
  • 2005—José Ramírez Pulido, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana - Iztapalapa, México, D. F., México
  • 2006—James H. Brown, University of Arizona; University of New Mexico
  • 2007—Jerry R. Choate, Sternberg Museum and Fort Hays State University; and University of Connecticut
  • 2007—Richard W. Thorington, Jr., National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
  • 2008—Thomas H. Kunz, Boston University
  • 2008—Alfredo Langguth, Laboratorio de Evolución, Universidad de la República, Uruguay
  • 2008—Terry L. Yates, University of New Mexico
  • 2009—Kenneth B. Armitage, The University of Kansas
  • 2009—Timothy H. Clutton-Brock, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

2010+

  • 2010—Alfred L. Gardner, Biological Survey Unit, USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, National Museum of Natural History
  • 2011—Paul A. Racey, Department of Zoology, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom
  • 2011—Hans Kruuk, Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, Banchory, Scotland, United Kingdom
  • 2012—Rui Cerqueira, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • 2012—David J. Schmidly, Texas A&M University; Texas Tech University; Oklahoma State University; and University of New Mexico
  • 2013—Colin Peter Groves, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University
  • 2013—Fabian Miguel Jaksic Andrade, Departamento de Ecología, Universidad Catόlica de Chile
  • 2015—Katherine Ralls, National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution
  • 2016—Kay E. Holekamp, Department of Zoology, Michigan State University
  • 2017—Charles J. Krebs, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia (Professor Emeritus)
  • 2018—Gilberto Silva Taboada, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de La Habana
  • 2019—Jennifer Marshall Graves Australian National University, Canberra, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
  • 2019—David Macdonald, Oxford University, England
  • 2019—Marilyn Renfree, University of Melbourne, Australia.

2020+

  • 2021—Alicia V. Linzey, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA
  • 2021—M. Brock Fenton, University of Western Ontario, Canada
  • 2021—Rubén M. Barquez, Universidad Nacional de Tucuman, Argentina
  • 2021—Nigel C. Bennett, University of Pretoria, South Africa
  • 2021—Vladimír Hanák, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
  • 2022—Elisabeth S. Vrba, Yale University, USA
  • 2022—George B. Schaller, Wildlife Conservation Society

Michael Rogers Oldfield Thomas (1858–1929). British Museum invertebrate biologist; shifted to mammal taxonomy. Greatest mammal taxonomist in history, naming more than 2,000 types and publishing more than 1,100 papers. His research was mainly conducted on museum specimens rather than field research. In recognition of the end of WW1, he named a genus of Argentine rodent, Irenomys, for Irene, the Goddess of Peace. Died by suicide after his wife and research partner, Mary, died. He named Eligmodontia marica in her honor.

C. Hart Merriam (1855–1942). Father of American mammalogy and early researcher in ornithology. Medical doctor but dedicated his life to studying birds and mammals. First major publications were on birds of Connecticut and New York. Began collecting mammal specimens and soon had 7,000. Appointed chief of Biological Survey, which became the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Led expeditions of discovery to much of North America and formed a group of outstanding explorer/scientists to survey the US and Mexico. Discovered 660 new mammals and developed a collection of 140,000 specimens. 

James Smith Findley (1926–2018). Mammalogist and natural historian at the University of New Mexico (Mammals of New Mexico). Student of E. R. Hall, University of Kansas. Specialist in both shrews and bats (Bats: A Community Perspective), with more than 100 publications. President of ASM. Teacher whose students became well known in mammalogy and ecology, several becoming presidents and officers of ASM. 

Eviatar Nevo (1929– ). Evolutionary biologist in Israel studying speciation across taxa. Published 1,200 papers and 24 books, 57,000 citations. Founder and director of Institute of Evolution at the University of Haifa. Developed the Evolution Canyon model of sympatric speciation (called the Israeli Galapagos). Discovered many new species, including 77 new mushrooms in the Dead Sea. Studied subterranean mammals. 

James Hemphill Brown (1942– ). Evolutionary biologist, University of Arizona and University of New Mexico.  Studied desert rodent ecology, ants, birds and other taxonomic groups. Developed field of macroecology. Contributed to an engineering and ecological theory of metabolic ecology. Published 363 scientific articles cited more than 57,000 times.. President ASM. Member National Academy of Sciences.

Philip Hershkovitz (1909–1997). Field biologist (University of Pittsburgh, University of Michigan). Research in tropics on primates and rodents. Described 70 new mammals. Spent 50 years as curator at Field Museum. Started doctoral studies but never completed them. Notwithstanding, he published 162 sole-authored articles and monographs, and only 3 papers with multiple authors. Some publications were classics: Living New World Monkeys (Platyrhini) with an Introduction to Primates; The Recent Mammals of the Neotropical Region; Evolution of Neotrpical Cricetine Rodents (Muridae) with Special Reference to the Phyllotine Group.

Franklin H. Bronson (1932– ). PhD at Pennsylvania State University. Professor at University of Texas at Austin. Specialist in environmental regulation of mammalian reproduction. Author of Mammalian Reproduction. Examined how global climate change affects reproduction in mammals. Studied reproduction in wild house mice, deer mice, and other rodents, as well as tropical bats; more than 175 publications on reproduction.

Don E. Wilson (1944– ). PhD at University of New Mexico under J.S. Findley. Worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service at the Smithsonian Institution. Conducted research in 64 countries, mainly studying bats and rodents. Author, co-author or editor of classic books: Mammals of New Mexico, Mammal Species of the World, Handbook of Mammals of the World, A Field Guide to North American Mammals. He published more than 270 scientific contributions. He was president of the ASM.