Balzan Symposium Held by P.and R. Grant at Princeton University (News, 15 September 2008)

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Peter and Rosemary Grant

2005 Balzan Prize for Population Biology

Peter and Rosemary Grant are distinguished for their remarkable long-term studies demonstrating evolution in action in Galápagos finches. They have demonstrated how very rapid changes in body and beak size in response to changes in the food supply are driven by natural selection. They have also elucidated the mechanisms by which new species arise and how genetic diversity is maintained in natural populations. The work of the Grants has had a seminal influence in the fields of population biology, evolution and ecology.

Balzan Symposium held by Peter and Rosemary Grant at Princeton University (News, 15 September 2008)

A symposium on population biology and evolution was held at Princeton University on September 5 – 6, 2008.
The symposium, organized by Peter and Rosemary Grant, was a discussion of the research projects that were made possible thanks to the 2005 Balzan Prize, which the Grants won for their work on the evolution of Darwin’s Finches on the Galápagos Islands. A condition of the prize is that the Prizewinners must destine half of the prize to finance research projects that are preferably carried out by young scholars or scientists, to facilitate and promote scientific research.

The meeting was an exploration of the results of the research studies on small populations that were financed by the prize money awarded to the Grants by the International Balzan Foundation in 2005. Four young researchers, Maria Margarita Womack from Princeton, Paquita Hoeck from Zurich, Jennifer Gee and Céline Clabaut from Harvard, presented their research to the scientific community at Robertson Hall, Princeton University. Several outstanding scientists from all over the world and four students from Universities in Ecuador, the Universidad de San Francisco and the Universidad Católica de Quito (Ecuador), also presented brief summaries of their research.

On September 4, 2008, the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology departments at Princeton University held a day of seminars to honour Peter and Rosemary Grant.