Raven

Peter H. Raven, the internationally known biologist who heads St. Louis' Missouri Botanical Garden, has been named as the 2004 Jill and Ken Iscol Distinguished Environmental Lecturer at Cornell University.

The Cornell Center for the Environment, which presents the annual lectureship, has scheduled a general-interest speech by Raven on Thursday, April 29, at 4:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium, as well as a day of more specialized seminars, lectures and meetings for Cornell faculty, students and staff on Friday, April 30.

• Titled "Biodiversity, Sustainability and Cornell," Raven's April 29 lecture is open to the public, at no charge, and will be followed by a 5:30 p.m. reception, also at the auditorium in Kennedy Hall. The leader in the fields of botany and conservation biology is expected to discuss threats to the planet's biological diversity and to suggest ways that members of the Cornell community can help solve the problem.
• A scientific talk, "How Many Species Will Survive the 21st Century?" also is free and open to the public, beginning at 4 p.m. Friday, April 30, in Bache Auditorium of Malott Hall. At the current rate of habitat destruction and increasing influence of alien exotic species, a quarter of all species on Earth could be on the road to extinction, Raven will predict.

Raven, the Englemann Professor of Botany at Washington University, became director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1971, eventually making it a much-visited tourist destination, an educational outreach facility for the region and a major research organization with activities on four continents. To biological scientists, Raven is known for his broad research approach that spans genetics, ecology, biogeography and phylogeny. Conservationists revere Raven for his work in preserving endangered plants and his outspoken advocacy for a sustainable environment. Among college students, Raven is probably better known as the co-author (along with Washington University Professor George B. Johnson) of the best-selling text, Biology , now in its sixth edition. The University of California graduate (B.S. from Berkeley and Ph.D. from UCLA) is the author or co-author of more than 400 scientific articles and 16 books and an elected member of national science academies in nine countries. Raven has been accorded his field's most prestigious honor, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and Time magazine has hailed him as a "Hero for the Planet."

Now in their sixth season, the Iscol lectureships were established to recognize scholarship on the frontiers of scientific inquiry by bringing to campus distinguished policymakers and scientists who can address environmental issues of paramount importance to humankind. Previous Iscol lecturers have been: atmospheric chemist F. Sherwood Rowland (1999); Cornell faculty-researchers Thomas Eisner and Jerrold Meinwald (2000), population biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich (2001), National Science Foundation Director Rita R. Colwell (2002) and medical writer Laurie Garrett (2003).