User:Kelliecarblue/sandbox

Barbara Rosemary Grant on site researching birds in 2007.

Barbara Rosemary Grant was born in Arnside, England in 1936. She grew up enjoying the diversity of her surroundings; she collected plant fossils and compared them to living look-alikes. At age 12, she read Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Despite what teachers told her at school, she was destined to go to university to obtain a degree. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a degree in Zoology in 1960.

For the next year, she studied genetics under Conrad Waddington. She then devised a dissertation to study isolated populations of fish, this was put on hold when she accepted a biology teaching job at the University of British Columbia, where she met Peter Grant.

They are both evolutionary biologist at Princeton University and each hold the position of emeritus professor. They are known for there research conducted on Darwin's finches on Daphne Major, one of the Galápagos Islands. Together the couple spent six months of every year capturing, tagging, and taking blood samples from finches on the island. They have worked to show that natural selection can be seen within a single lifetime, or even within a couple of years. Charles Darwin originally thought that natural selection was a long, drawn out process. The Grants have shown that these changes in populations can happen very quickly.

Academic Career

• BSc (Hons), University of Edinburgh, 1960
• PhD (Evolutionary Biology), Uppsala University, 1985
• Research Associate, Yale University, 1964
• Research Associate, McGill University, 1973
• Research Associate, University of Michigan, 1977
• Research Scholar and lecturer, Princeton University, 1985
• Senior Research Scholar with rank of Professor, Princeton University, 1997
• Senior Research Scholar with rank of Professor Emeritus, Princeton University, 2008

Research

While attending Edinburgh Grant studied genetics for a year with Conrad Waddington. While working with Waddington she worked on discovering immunological methods that can find difference on the surface proteins of cells between pathogenic and nonpathogenic strains of soil amoebas.

She then devised a dissertation to study isolated populations of fish. This was put on hold when she accepted a biology teaching job at the University of British Columbia.

Societies:

• American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Charles Darwin Foundation
• American Society of Naturalists
• Royal Society of Canada
• Royal Society of London
• American Philosophical Society

Honorary Degrees:

• McGill University, 2002
• Universidad San Francisco, Quito, 2005
• University of Zurich, 2008
• University of Toronto, 2017

Honorary citizen of Puerto Bacquerizo, I. San Cristobal, Galapagos- 2005–

Since 2010, she has been honored annually by the Society for the Study of Evolution with the Rosemary Grant Graduate Student Research Award competition, which supports early stage PhD students to increase their research past current funding.

Barbara Rosemary Grant and her husband Peter Grant.

Joint Research With Peter Grant

Research Summary

With her husband Peter Grant they have done a few different research efforts. They changed the observation put forth of Charles Darwin that natural selection can not be seen in one lifetime. They have decades long studies and to read the full details visit Peter Grant's page under the heading Joint Research With Barbara Rosemary Grant.

Achievements Received Jointly

• 2017 Royal Medal, Royal Society
• 2009 Kyoto Prize, Inamori Foundation
• 2009 Darwin-Wallace Medal, Linnean Society of London
• 2006 Municipality of Puerto Rico Ayora Science Award
• 2005 Balzan Prize for Population Biology
• 2005 Outstanding Scientists Award, American Institute of Biological Sciences
• 2003 Grinnell Award, University of California at Berkeley
• 2003 Loye and Alden Miller Award, Cooper Ornithological Society
• 2002 Darwin Medal, Royal Society
• 1998 E.O. Wilson Prize, American Society of Naturalists
• 1994 Leidy Medal, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia

Books Published

• Evolutionary Dynamics of a Natural Population: Large Cactus Finch of the Galapagos – Rosemary & Peter Grant – (University of Chicago Press, 1989) ISBN 978-0-226-30590-5 (Received the Wildlife Publication Award, Wildlife Society, 1991)
• How and Why Species Multiply: The Radiation of Darwin’s Finches – Peter & Rosemary Grant – (Princeton University Press,2008/2011) ISBN 978-0-691-14999-8
• 40 Years of Evolution: Darwin's Finches on Daphne Major Island – Peter & Rosemary Grant – (Princeton University Press,2014) ISBN 978-0-691-16046-7

The Grants research is included in The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner (Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), ISBN 0-679-40003-6, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1995.