American Society of Naturalists

The American Society of Naturalists was founded in 1883 and is one of the oldest professional societies dedicated to the biological sciences in North America. The purpose of the Society is "to advance and diffuse knowledge of organic evolution and other broad biological principles so as to enhance the conceptual unification of the biological sciences."

Founded in Massachusetts with Alpheus Spring Packard Jr. as its first president, it was called the Society of Naturalists of the Eastern United States until 1886.^[1]

The scientific journal The American Naturalist is published on behalf of the society.

The Society holds an annual meeting, commonly called 'Evolution', jointly with the Society for the Study of Evolution and Society of Systematic Biologists, with a scientific program of symposia and contributed papers and posters. It also confers a number of awards for achievement in evolutionary biology and/or ecology, including the Conceptual Unification Award (originally named in honor of Sewall Wright) for senior researchers making "fundamental contributions ... to the conceptual unification of the biological sciences", the Distinguished Naturalist award for "significant contributions" from naturalists in mid-career (originally named for E. O. Wilson), the Early Career Investigators Award for promising scientists early in their careers (originally named for Jasper Loftus-Hills), among other awards.^[2]

The current president is Jeff Conner (2024). The president and vice-president elect for 2025 are Dan Bolnick and Amy Angert, respectively. Notable past-presidents and vice-presidents include:^[3]

Presidents

• Grove K. Gilbert (1885)
• Theodosius. Dobzhansky (1950)
• Sewall Wright (1952; treasurer 1929; after whom the ASN Sewall Wright award is named)
• Evelyn Hutchinson (1958)
• Ernst Mayr (1962)
• Peter H. Raven (1983)
• Janis Antonovics (1986)
• Peter Grant (1999)
• Dan Simberloff (2003)
• Jonathan Losos (2010)
• Robert Ricklefs (2011)
• Dolph Schluter (2013)
• Kathleen Donohue (2017)
• Sharon Strauss (2018)
• Judie Bronstein (2022)

Vice-presidents

• Douglas Schemske (1999 and 2009)
• Susan Harrison (2006)
• Sarah P. (Sally) Otto (2008)
• Hopi Hoekstra (2012)
• Anurag Agrawal (2016)

• The American Society of Naturalists
• American Naturalist
• Archive Records of the American Society of Naturalists (1884) links to other records of the society, and out of copyright issues of the American Naturalist
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)