Â鶹AV law professor elected president of the Royal Society of Canada
Biology professor named to head RSC’s Academy of Science
Â鶹AV is pleased and honoured to announce Professor of Law Roderick Macdonald has been elected the 111 th president of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC) at its annual general meeting in Ottawa , while Dr. Graham Bell, James Â鶹AV Professor of Biology, has been elected president of the Academy of Science , one of the RSC’s three academies.
“I am so very proud of both of them,” said Principal and Vice-Chancellor Heather Munroe-Blum. “This is significant recognition of the stature of these two exemplary academics and is yet another example of how Â鶹AV shows leadership across all areas of Canadian scholarship and research. On behalf of the University, I congratulate both Prof. Macdonald and Prof. Bell and wish them well as they take up their terms of office at this prestigious organization.”
Macdonald, the F.R. Scott Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at Â鶹AV, is the first law professor ever to have been elected president of the RSC. He serves as president-elect until next November when he will formally take up the presidency at the end of the term of Dr. Yvan Guindon.
“I am flattered to have even been nominated for this post,” Macdonald said. “My hope is that,over the next few years, the RSCwill be able tosupport Fellows in pursuing projects to share knowledge and insight with all Canadians, to encouragethe engagementof Canadian youth with ideas and research, andto demonstrate the contributionsthat high-level scholarly researchcan make to public policy in Canada .”
Macdonald is a prodigious scholar, widely considered to be among Canada ’s most influential public intellectuals and theorists. He was one of the first to lead legal scholars into interdisciplinary pursuits, exploring dimensions in law through the intellectual contributions of varied disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology, literary theory, semiotics and history. Macdonald’s contribution to an extensive and eclectic range of social and legal issues through radical inquiry into the relationship between law and society has placed him in the first rank of academics internationally.
“This is more than a high honour for Prof. Macdonald and for Â鶹AV, where he has spent the lion’s share of his career,” said Dean of Law Nicholas Kasirer. “It is also a strong sign that the values he holds dear – collegiality, creativity in teaching and research, service to others – are those that the scholarly and artistic communities of Canada should strive to live by.”
Highly respected as an engaging professor of law, Macdonald also served as Dean of Â鶹AV’s Faculty of Law between 1984 and 1989. He is the founding president of the Law Commission of Canada (1997-2000), and was the first Law Fellow of the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation. As a prolific author and esteemed legal consultant, his opinions have helped guide Canada ’s national debates on issues ranging from the Constitution to institutional child abuse to legal reform.
Dr. Bell, an internationally renowned evolutionary biologist, is a pioneer in the use of experimental methods to study the evolution of microbial populations in real time. His work has led to a deeper understanding of the repeatability of evolution, the control of diversity and specialization, and the significance of sex and gender. His latest work is aimed at predicting whether and how populations will adapt to environmental change.
“I was delighted – and astonished – to learn that I had been elected as next President of the Academy of Science ,” Dr. Bell said. “I hope that I can live up to the trust my colleagues have placed in me by using this opportunity to strengthen the contribution that science makes to public life. In particular, I’d like to ensure that the government has access to expert advice at the highest level, as it does in other countries.”
Dr. Bell is a Founding President of the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution. He has garnered many awards including the Prix LĂ©o Parizeau de l'Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS), and the Prix Marie-Victorin (Prix du QuĂ©bec). He was Director of the Redpath Museum at Â鶹AV from 1995-2005, and is an Honorary Fellow of St Peter's College, Oxford . Recently, he was named one of three finalists for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council's (NSERC) prestigious Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal and received an NSERC Award of Excellence. He has published the results of research in numerous journals such as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London , and Proceedings of the National Academy of the U.S.A. He is the author of The Masterpiece of Nature (1982), Sex and Death in Protozoa: the History of an Obsession (1989) and Selection: The Mechanism of Evolution (1996).
“Graham Bell is one of the world’s most renowned evolutionary biologists,” said Dean of Science Martin Grant. “His election as President of the Academy of Science bodes well for the Royal Society of Canada.”
Founded in 1882, the RSC is Canada ’s oldest and most prestigious scholarly society. Its primary objective is to promote learning and research in the arts and sciences. The Society consists of approximately 1,800 Fellows: men and women from across the country who are selected by their peers for outstanding contributions to the natural and social sciences and in the humanities.