- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
There's still time--and room--to register to attend virtually the New Emeriti Distinguished Lecture on Wednesday, Feb. 15 by UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Geerat Vermeij, an evolutionary biologist and paleoecologist with the UC Davis Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
Vermeij will speak in-person at 3 p.m. to a capacity crowd in the Putah Creek Lodge on "The Evolution of Power."
Putah Creek Lodge reservations are closed, but folks can watch the seminar virtually on Zoom, announced coordinator Walter Leal, UC Davis distinguished professor of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and former chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology.
The lecture will be live-streamed on Zoom; registration is underway at https://bit.ly/3BXh0zA.
The program will include a poem by Andy Jones, continuing lecturer in the University Writing Program and a former poet laureate of the city of Davis. Leal also said that some "of our newest emeriti" will be honored.
In a pre-recorded video, Vermeij told Leal: "I'm going to talk about power. And I'm using power in the sense of physics and engineering, that is to say, energy per unit time. All kinds of biological phenomenon can be expressed in terms of power, so for example, productivity, even fitness, the use of force with respect to time and so on. And it turns out that if you think about various biological functions and interactions in terms of power, you rapidly come to see that the most powerful organisms have the greatest effect on their surroundings, in fact, they modify their own surroundings, often to their own benefit."
Vermeij is known for his work on coevolutionary telationships between predator and prey organisms, with a focus on marine mollusks. A native of The Netherlands, he lost his sight to glaucoma at age three, but did not let that deter him. Majoring in biology and geology, he graduated summa cum laudefrom Princeton University in 1968, and obtained his doctorate in biology and geology from Yale University in 1971. In 1992, Vermeij received a MacArthur Fellowship, the “genius” grant, and in 2000, was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. (See The Shape of Life.)
The three-part New Emeriti Distinguished Lecture series "is a platform to celebrate the accomplishments of retiring colleagues,” Leal said last fall. “They have dedicated their lives to laying the foundation for UC Davis to grow into a premiere academic institution. We are very thankful for their contributions to the university's missions and for making UC Davis a better place for us to succeed."
First speaker in the series was UC Davis distinguished professor emeritus Harris Lewin, renowned for his research in comparative mammalian genomics and immunogenetics. He spoke Dec. 7 on “From Chickens to Cows to Everything: Perspectives from 40 Years in Science."
The last speaker in the series is Sharon Strauss, distinguished professor emerita, Department of Evolution and Ecology, College of Biological Sciences. She will speak at 3 p.m. Monday, April 17.
Leal released a “Tribute to Our New Emeriti" video last fall, spotlighting 24 faculty members who retired in 2021-22.