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Secretariat of the International Prize for Biology, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
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On December 1st, a presentation ceremony for the 2014 International Prize for Biology was held at the Japan Academy in the presence of Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress, Mr. Hiroshige Seko, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary, and Mr. Tomohiro Yamamoto, Parliamentary Vice-Minister, Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. At the ceremony, Professor Sir Peter Crane FRS was presented the Prize of ten-million yen and a medal by Dr. Sugimura, Chair of the Committee, along with an Imperial gift from His Majesty the Emperor.
Acceptance Address by Professor Sir Peter CraneProfessor Sir Peter Crane FRS Thank you for this opportunity to express my appreciation for the Award of the International Prize for Biology. I am honored to receive this Prize in the presence of Their Majesties the Emperor and Empress, and in the field of Systematic Biology and Taxonomy that His Majesty has advanced through his research on the taxonomy of gobioid fishes. All of us engaged in the science of biological diversity are privileged to be able to count His Majesty as a colleague. I am also deeply grateful to the directors and committee members of The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for this recognition. I first visited Japan as a young man almost 45 years ago. Already by then I had been exposed to the thrill of making original discoveries that shine new light on the past. Very early I also benefited from training in the systematics of living plants, as well in palaeobotany. Ever since, I have been fortunate in the institutions with which I have been associated, the teachers and mentors who have supported me, and the colleagues with whom I have been privileged to work. It is an honor for me to have so many of those colleagues and other friends here today, along with my unfailingly supportive wife Elinor. A pervasive theme in my research, which has also seen greater emphasis in palaeobotany as a whole over the past few decades, has been the integration of information from fossils and living plants toward a more complete understanding of botanical evolutionary history. Such integration has been facilitated by the development of phylogenetic methods, but also requires fossils that are preserved sufficiently well to allow meaningful comparison with living counterparts. In the case of early land plants, advances in research on Silurian and Devonian fossils eventually made it possible to combine palaeobotanical discoveries with insights from living “green algae”, “bryophytes” and vascular plants into a new and more comprehensive understanding of the initial diversification of plants on land. In the case of angiosperms, pioneering research on exquisitely preserved ancient flowers by Else Marie Friis in the early 1980s opened up a new and unexpected field of study. In particular, the material that Else Marie Friis, Kaj Raunsgaard Pedersen and myself have investigated from the Early Cretaceous of eastern North America and Portugal, combined with improved knowledge of living angiosperms, has provided a more detailed glimpse into the early evolution of flowering plants than would previously have been thought possible. The same approaches are also providing new insights into other extinct seed plants, some of which are undoubtedly relevant for understanding angiosperm origins. In paleontology we rely heavily on using the present to interpret the past. Yet at the same time, the importance of contingency and extinction, both in ecology and evolution, reminds us that understanding the present also requires understanding history. The value of paleontology lies not simply in extrapolating the present back into the past, but in expanding knowledge, by illuminating ancient worlds that often differed in important ways from the world of today. Such perspectives, rooted in deep history, emphasize the grandeur of evolution over vast spans of geologic time. They also underline the need for enlightened environmental management in the face of rapid contemporary environmental change. In honoring how the past helps us understand the present The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science reminds us of our place in the world, and the value of humility as we together influence the future of our planet.
Report on the Process of SelectionDr. Yoshinori Fujiyoshi, Chairman Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:
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