James Hanken
Director, Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology
James Hanken is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, Curator in Herpetology, and Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He received A.B. and Ph.D. degrees in zoology from the University of California, Berkeley. After a postdoctoral stint at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, he assumed a faculty position at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He moved to Harvard in 1999, where he is also Professor of Biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and a faculty member of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Hanken’s research focuses on the evolutionary morphology, development and systematics of vertebrates, especially amphibians. His laboratory maintains active field programs in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. He has authored more than 100 scientific publications and edited four books, and he is an accomplished nature and scientific photographer. His photographs appear in several books, field guides, and magazines, including Natural History, Geo, Audubon, and National Geographic World.
Dr. Hanken is a member of the U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Biological Sciences. He is past President of the International Society of Vertebrate Morphologists; former Chair, International Board of Directors, of the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force; and former Co-chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life. Honors include the von Hofsten Lecture (Uppsala University, Sweden), the Gompertz Lecture in Integrative Biology (University of California, Berkeley), and election as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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