Evolutionary biologists Peter R. Grant, professor of zoology, emeritus, and B. Rosemary Grant, senior research biologist, emeritus, both within the Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, will be the featured speakers for the 2024 Terry Keiser Distinguished Lectureship in the Life Sciences. Their presentation, titled “The Nature of the Galapágos,” will take place Wednesday, April 17 at 7:30 p.m. in McIntosh Center’s ballroom. The lecture will be free and open to the public.
The Grants are internationally acclaimed for their work with finches of the Galapágos Islands, most of it on the island of Daphne Major. Since 1973, they have spent six months of every year studying the island’s finches. Their groundbreaking work has shown that natural selection can be seen even within a few years.
Both Fellows of the Royal Society, the Gants have won several prestigious awards. In 2008 they were among the 13 recipients of the Darwin-Wallace Medal, which is bestowed every 50 years by the Linnean Society of London. In 2009, they were recipients of the annual Kyoto Prize in basic sciences, an international award honoring significant contributions to the scientific, cultural, and spiritual betterment of mankind. They received the Royal Medal in Biology in 2017 and in 1994 received the Leidy Award from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. In 2003, the Grants were joint recipients of the Loye and Alden Miller Research Award and won the 2005 Balzan Prize for Population Biology.
The two were the subject of the book, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time, by Jonathan Weiner, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1995.
ONU’s Keiser Distinguished Lectureship in Life Sciences, named in honor of Terry D. Keiser, BSEd '64, brings nationally prominent life sciences scholars to Ohio Northern's campus each year to lecture and interact with students.