̽��ֱ��

̽��ֱ��Verrill Medal is the highest honour for achievement in natural sciences that theYale Peabody Museum of Natural History can bestow.

Current Peabody Museum Director Michael Donaghue paid tribute in a citation before presenting the Medal:

“Alison Fettes Richard — anthropologist, conservationist, inspired teacher, advocate for the scientific and aesthetic value of museum collections, and leader of extraordinary academic institutions — you are widely known for your research on the ecology, behaviour, and social organisation of living primates, especially of the Malagasy lemurs, focusing on what these close relatives of humans tell us about the evolution of society and fostering conservation and economic development efforts in Madagascar to save its remaining wildlife and unique environments.

“You were among the first to recognise the importance of preserving the biodiversity and ecosystems upon which human well-being depends so directly. Your visionary leadership of institutions has magnified your role as a scientist and leader in the conservation of endangered species and their habitats.”

Professor Richard studied anthropology at Newnham College, Cambridge, then read for a PhD in primate biology at London ̽��ֱ��. She joined the Yale faculty in 1972 and she was named the Franklin Muzzy Crosby Professor of the Human Environment in 1986. Between 1991 and 1994, she served as Director of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, one of the most important university natural history collections in the US.

From April 1994 to December 2002, Professor Richard served as Provost of Yale ̽��ֱ��. ̽��ֱ��Provost is the chief academic and administrative officer of the ̽��ֱ�� after the President.

Awarded by the curators and trustees of the Yale Peabody Museum, the Verrill Medal was established in 1959 to honour Yale scientist Addison Emery Verrill (1839–1926), one of the 19th-century’s great zoologists known worldwide for his studies of starfish, squid, corals and other marine animals. Through his efforts the Peabody’s zoological collections became one of the most important in the United States.

Several Verrill Medals were awarded in the early 1960’s, and then in 1966, five awards were made in a special ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Peabody Museum. These awards were given to the greatest evolutionary biologists and anthropologists of that time: Theodozious Dobzhansky, Ernst Mayr, Richard McNeish, Norman Newell, and George Gaylord Simpson, and soon thereafter to the botanist, G. Ledyard Stebbins. – all of them giants in fields directly related to the Peabody.

It wasn’t until the early 1980s’s that several additional awards were made to, among others, Yale’s own G. Evelyn Hutchinson, the father of ecology, Rudolph Zallinger, the artist who painted the Peabody’s amazing reptile mural, and to Dillon Ripley. Last October two more evolutionary biologists were added to the list of Verrill Medal recipients: Peter Raven of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Ed Wilson of Harvard ̽��ֱ��. Professor Richard is the 18th recipient.