Glaser Professors

Dr. Thomas F. Ledig serves as a Full Professor and member of the Board of Permanent Officers at Yale University. He joined the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station in 1979 as Director of the Institute of Forest Genetics, located in Berkeley and Placerville, California. Currently, Senior Scientist in the Pacific Southwest Research Station and adjunct professor at the University of California-Davis.

Dr. Ledig led two binational gene conservation projects – with Mexico and Australia. Served on the Policy Advisory Board of the University of California’s Genetic Resources Conservation Program (1987-92). He was a member of the scientific committee of the Bull Foundation for conservation (1992-95), was a member of the University of California-Davis Working Group on Conservation Biology and Agriculture (1988); participated in the Keystone National Policy Dialogue on Biological Diversity (1989-91); was a consultant for the National Academy of Science/National Research Council on management of forest genetic resources (1988-90) and for the Office of Technology Assessment on their report, “Preparing for an Uncertain Climate” (1992-93).

Dr. Ledig is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the Secretary (1985-) of the UN/FAO/North American Forest Commission’s Forest Genetic Resources Working Group. He is also a member of IUCN Species Survival Commission/Conifer Specialist Group; Society for Conservation Biology; International Society of Tropical Foresters; Botanical Society of America; California Botanical Society; Society of American Foresters; and American Society of Plant Taxonomists.

Dr. Ledig has over 120 publications in genetics and physiology. Honors: four Distinguished Publication awards (1983, 1988, 1992, 2001) and Milestone Publication award (2003) from the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Research Station, and its Outstanding Scientist award (1988); Schaffer Lecturer at the University of British Columbia (1988); Glaser Distinguished Professor at Florida International University (1992); Barrington Moore Memorial Award for outstanding achievement in biological research (1992) from the Society of American Foresters; Distinguished Services Award from the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (2000); elected AAAS Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (2002); and North American Forest Commission award (2008).

His current research interests are in population genetics and evolution of Mexican and Californian conifers, the role of genetic diversity in natural populations, and conservation biology.

Dr. Richard Morita was born in Pasadena, California on March 27, 1923. After being interned in the Japanese Relocation Camps during World War II, he served in the US Army (1944-1946) and earned his BS in bacteriology/chemistry from the University of Nebraska (1947). He received a MS in bacteriology from the University of Southern California in 1949. In 1954, he received a PhD in microbiology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His doctoral dissertation was titled Occurrence and Significance of Bacteria in Marine Sediments. While a graduate student at Scripps, Morita served as a microbiologist on several research cruises including: the MidPac Expedition (1950), the Galathea Deep Sea Expedition (1952), and the Transpac Expedition (1953). He worked as a research biologist at Scripps from 1954-1955. He was an assistant professor of biology at the University of Houston from 1955-1958 and an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Nebraska from 1958-1962. In 1962, he became a professor of microbiology and oceanography at Oregon State University (OSU) where he was named professor emeritus in 1989. Over the years he has held a variety of positions in national and international organizations including: program director for Biochemistry, Molecular Biology Section, BMS, National Science Foundation (NSF) (1968-1969); Advisory Committee on Carbon Dioxide (and Microbiology), National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA, 1976); visiting professor, Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo (1978); consultant, Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory (1979); consultant, Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (1979); and scientific advisor, Operation DeepStar, Japan Marine Science and Technology Center, Japan. In 1984, he was given the Milton Harris Award in Basic Research from Oregon State University, College of Science.

Dr. Francisco José Ayala Pereda is a Spanish-American evolutionary biologist and philosopher at the University of California, Irvine. He is a former Dominican priest, ordained in 1960, but left the priesthood that same year. After graduating from the University of Salamanca, he moved to the US in 1961 to study for a PhD at Columbia University. There, he studied for his doctorate under Theodosius Dobzhansky, graduating in 1964. He became a US citizen in 1971.

He has been President and Chairman of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At University of California, Irvine, his academic appointments include University Professor and Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology (School of Biological Sciences), Professor of Philosophy, (School of Humanities), and Professor of Logic and the Philosophy of Science (School of Social Sciences).