One of Canada’s finest authors and a scientist who has expanded the search for
microbial life on earth and beyond will receive honorary degrees from the
university at Fall Congregation.
Carol Shields is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The
Stone Diaries and an accomplished writer of drama, poetry, short stories
and journalism. Her other titles include Swann, Happenstance and
The Republic of Love.
Among the awards she has received are the Canadian Booksellers’ Prize in 1994,
the Manitoba Book of the Year Award and the Governor General’s Award, both in
1993, and the Marian Engel Award in 1990.
Shields has been a writer in residence at the universities of Winnipeg and
Ottawa and has lectured at UBC. She is currently an associate professor at the
University of Manitoba and was recently appointed chancellor of the University
of Winnipeg.
Shields will address the Faculty Women’s Club Nov. 29 at 1:00 p.m. in Cecil
Green Park House.
Norman Pace, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, is a
leader in the field of designing and conducting experiments to detect microbial
life in the far reaches of the solar system and deep beneath the sea in
hyperthermal vents.
Through his biochemical studies with ribonucleic acid (RNA), he has provided
fundamentally important new insights into the origins of life and the diversity
of existing organisms on earth.
Pace has strong ties to UBC through his leading role in two key programs: a
biodiversity initiative which involves cataloguing and describing organisms
present in the biosphere, and the Evolutionary Biology Program of the Canadian
Institute for Advanced Research.
Pace is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
