A former University of California, Davis entomologist who is internationally renowned as a honeybee geneticist has been elected a fellow of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Robert E. Page Jr., who chaired the UC Davis Department of Entomology from 1999 to 2004 before assuming his current position as founding director of the School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University (ASU), received the honor this week.
"I was totally surprised," said Page from his university office in Tempe. "I don't normally think about awards and honors, I just stay busy. But, with that said, I am very honored."
Considered a pioneer in the field of evolutionary genetics and the social behavior of honeybees, Page said he did much of his research at UC Davis. He received his doctorate in entomology at UC Davis in 1980, and then joined the Ohio State University faculty before returning to UC Davis as a faculty member from 1989 through June 2004.
Page retired from UC Davis as chair and professor emeritus of entomology before accepting the newly created ASU position, involving a three-department merger of biology, microbiology and plant biology. The school now includes more than 100 faculty, 250 graduate students, 5,000 undergraduates and more than 300 staff. Page also serves as a Foundation Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
"Davis is still home to me," he said. "I raised my family there, my closest friends and colleagues are still in the entomology department there. I still feel very strong attachments."
In the 1990s, Page led a team of collaborators in mapping a single gene responsible for the honeybee's complementary sex-determination system, resulting in a cover story in the journal Cell. Page and his research team later offered further insights into the regulation of honeybee foraging, defensive and alarm behavior.
On Jan. 5, the journal Nature published a cover story on the work of Page and other ASU researchers, who discovered a link between social behavior and maternal traits in bees.
In an ASU press release, life sciences professor and colleague Bert Hölldobler, who co-authored the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Ants, praised Page's work.
"Rob's election to the very distinguished American Academy of Arts and Sciences is a wonderful recognition of his outstanding contributions to science," said Hölldobler, himself a member of the American Academy. "He is the leading honeybee geneticist in the world. A number of now well-known scientists in the U.S. and Europe learned the ropes of sociogenetics in Rob's laboratory."
Referring to the list of new American Academy fellows, Hölldobler said: "Rob is in a very select group." The 174 new fellows include past presidents George H. W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, a Nobel laureate, and Pulitzer Prize winners.
Robert Washino, chair of the UC Davis Department of Entomology, said Page excels at both the classical and molecular approach to biology. "He studied under the late classical geneticist Harry Laidlow and after Rob received his doctorate and served on the Ohio State University faculty, he chose to return to UC Davis in 1989 to be with his former major professor. He later cared for him and his wife, Ruth, in their declining years. We all remember Rob's scholarly side and his humanitarian side."
Page is an elected foreign member of the Brazilian Academy of Science and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His awards include the Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award (the Humboldt Prize), the highest honor given by the German Government to foreign scientists. His publications include 156 research papers, 9 popular articles, 23 book chapters and review articles, co-editor of 3 books, and co-author of one textbook.
Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an international learned society comprised of the world's leading scientists, scholars, artists, and civic, corporate and philanthropic leaders. "Fellows are selected through a highly competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large," said academy president Patricia Meyer Spacks.
The 2006 American Academy fellows are listed online at http://www.amacad.org/news/new2006.aspx
(Editor's Note: Carol Hughes of the Arizona State University News Service contributed to this story.)