Kyoto Prize: Dr. Janzen of Biology

Dr. Daniel Janzen, professor of biology here since 1976, will receive one of the three Kyoto Awards, Japan's most highly valued awards for lifetime achievement, each carrying a 20k gold medal and a cash prize of 50 million yen (about $430,000).

He will receive the award in a November ceremony in Kyoto. The Kyoto Awards were established 13 years ago by Dr. Kazuo Inamori, founder and chair of Kyoccra Corp., a technical ceramics producer, and of DDI Corp., Japan's second-largest telecommunications provider.

Describing Dr. Janzen as the world's foremost pioneer in tropical biology, the Foundation's announcement said his research since 1960 "has contributed to the diverse fields of ecology, microbiology, biochemistry, zoology and botany. He has proposed numerous unique hypotheses concerning the interaction between tropical plants and animals and has brought new understanding to the phenomenon of tropical biodiversity."

Dr. Janzen, known especially for his work in the tropical rain forests of Costa Rica, has also won the Swedish Royal Academy's Crafoord Prize in ecology (1984)--a companion prize to the Nobel--and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1989.

Photo: Dr. Janzen in 1989, the year he was named a MacArthur Fellow


Almanac

Volume 44 Number 1
July 15, 1997


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