Magazine’s annual list recognizes top 50 contributions
to science and technology
Scientific American magazine has named UBC professor Daniel
Pauly, Director of UBC’s Fisheries Centre, one of the
“Scientific American 50” — the noted magazine’s
annual list recognizing outstanding acts of leadership in
science and technology from the past year.
Announced today, this year’s Scientific American 50
appear in the magazine’s December issue, arriving on newsstands
November 25. The complete list may also be accessed on the
magazine’s website as of November 10 at www.sciam.com.
Daniel Pauly is a world leader and innovator in fisheries
science, and a vocal and influential critic of the current
fishing practices depleting the earth’s fish stocks.
Pauly, 56, has been studying the declining bounty of the
seas for more than 25 years. Among his major achievements
are two of world’s most important fisheries projects.
FishBase is a global database packed with information on more
than 27,000 species of fish. Its Web site gets more than five
million hits a month. Ecopath is an ecosystem-modelling program
that predicts how fish populations might respond to various
pressures.
Dr Pauly joined UBC’s Fisheries Centre as a professor
in 1994, after many years at the International Centre for
Living Aquatic Resource Management (ICLARM), then in Manila,
Philippines.
His research, inspired by field work in the 1970s in West
Africa and Indonesia, and mostly conducted at ICLARM, was
originally devoted to the development of a methodology for
tropical fish stock assessment –disseminated through
courses he taught in four languages in Europe, Africa, Asia
and Latin America — and the comparative study of growth and
mortality in fish and invertebrates, both in the wild and
in culture.
Since 1999, Pauly has headed a UBC Fisheries Centre project
that looks at the impact of fisheries on the world’s
marine ecosystems. Called The Sea Around Us, it is funded
by a $4-million grant from Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable
Trusts.
Among his many honours, Pauly was elected to the Royal Society
of Canada in 2003. He was named director of UBC’s Fisheries
Centre in November 2003.
Pauly was born in Paris in 1946. He received his doctorate
in fisheries from the University of Kiel, Germany.
Selected by the magazine’s Board of Editors with the help
of distinguished outside advisors, the Scientific American
50 highlights a Research Leader of the Year, a Business Leader
of the Year and a Policy Leader of the Year. In addition it
cites research, business and policy leaders in many technological
categories, including Agriculture, Chemicals & Materials,
Communications, Computing, Energy, Environment, Medical Treatments
and more.
Founded in 1845, editorial contributors to Scientific American
have included more than 100 Nobel laureates, among them Albert
Einstein, Neils Bohr, Francis Crick, Stanley Prusiner and
Harold Varmus.
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