Honey bee geneticist Robert E. Page Jr., emeritus professor and former chair of the Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis, is a newly elected member of the oldest scientific academy of science, the Germany Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Page, who received his doctorate in entomology at UC Davis in 1980 and continues his research at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis, was elected to the prestigious academy for his pioneering research in behavioral genetics of honey bees.

Founded in 1652, the academy is the world’s oldest academy for medicine and natural sciences. Its members have included such notables as scientists Charles Darwin, Marie Curie and Albert Einstein, explorer Alexander von Humboldt, and author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

“Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin are my heroes,” said Page. “I am truly honored to belong to an academy that lists them as former members.”

Page earlier received the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, also known as the Humboldt Research Prize, the highest honor given to a foreign researcher by the German government.

“Rob Page is one of the most gifted scientists, administrators, and teachers I have had the privilege to know in 30 years in academia,” said James Carey, UC Davis professor of entomology and program director of the Biodemographic Determinants of Life Span project, who collaborates with Page. “Those of us who have worked with him congratulate him and are proud to call him our colleague and friend.”

Page's specialized genetic stock of honey bees is based at the Harry Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility. Bee breeder-geneticist Kim Fondrk manages the stock.

UC Davis chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor and former chair of the Department of Entomology, described Page as “one-of-a-kind: a premier scholar and an exemplary administrator.”

Page is a professor and the founding director of Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences. ASU recruited him in 2004—the year he retired from UC Davis--to organize three departments—biology, microbiology and botany, totaling more than 600 faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff--into one unified school. Page also established ASU’s Honey Bee Research Facility.

The author of more than 200 publications, Page is known for his expertise on Africanized bees, genetics and evolution of social organization, sex determination and division of labor in insect societies. His work has been published on the covers of such respected journals as Naturwissenschaften, Nature, Genome Research, Cell and BioEssays.

Long intrigued by the complex social behavior of honey bees, Page said that "Honey bees have a distinct caste system and division of labor, where most of the individuals that perform behavioral tasks associated with colonial living do not reproduce."

Page uses artificial selection to develop special strains of bees, a tool that has helped him dissect behavior and its underlying genetic and physiological architecture. His discovery of a high recombination rate in honey bees, and his studies with high and low pollen-hoarding strains of bees allowed the mapping of social behavior to the genome. His work was fundamental to the development and publication of the complete genome of the honey bee in 2006.

Within the ASU School of Life Sciences, Page created a platform for cross disciplinary, cutting-edge research. He formed the Social Insect Research Group that studies bees, wasps and termites. The research offers new insights into aging, epigenetics and development of disease, and also charts the basis for the evolution of social behavior, from genes to superorganisms.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and sociobiologist Bert Hölldobler, one of the collaborators in the Social Insect Research Group, praised Page’s work and his election to the academy. “Rob's reputation as an outstanding scientist and a brilliant academic leader is very strong and he has an outstanding record of international cooperation, particularly with Germany,” said Hölldobler, who himself was elected to the Germany Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 1975.

Of the 1300 members of the academy, three-fourths are from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. The remainder are from 30 other countries and include 79 Americans. “In its more than 350 years of existence, the academy’s membership has included 167 Nobel laureates, and some of the most formidable minds in physics, chemistry, biology, philosophy and mathematics,” said Arizona State University spokesperson Margaret Coulombe.

In addition to his election to academy, Page is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also is a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Wiko) or Institute for Advanced Study, where, for the next academic year, he will lead a working group on social insect evolution.