Professor Emeritus of Biology, University of Washington

A long time leader in the environmental sciences, Dr. Gordon Orians, who has been inducted into both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, served 10 years as the director of the UW Institute for Environmental Studies. During his 35 years as a UW professor of zoology, Dr. Orians conducted extensive research into the complex and often delicate relationships that exist between ecology and animal social organization and behavior. His research has shed much light on habitat selection, mate selection and mating systems, selection of prey and foraging patches, and plant-herbivore interactions. Dr. Orians now serves as Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of Washington.

Collaborating with psychologists, geographers, planners, and landscape painters, Dr. Orians has worked to make the discoveries of the laboratory known and accessible to the public. Dr. Orians serves as chair of the National Academy of Sciences committee that produced the report on cumulative effects of oil and gas activities on the North Slope of Alaska.