Category: Glaser Professor

1991 Richard Morita

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.

1991 Morita

1990 Francisco Ayala

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).

1990 Ayala