[报告名称]：Biodiversity and Conservation in China and the World

Biography of Peter H. Raven

Peter H. Raven, a leading botanist and advocate of conservation and biodiversity with a notably international outlook, is president of the Missouri Botanical Garden and George Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis.  In addition, Dr. Raven is a Trustee of the National Geographic Society and Chairman of the Society's Committee for Research and Exploration. For 38 years, Dr. Raven has headed the Missouri Botanical Garden, an institution he has nurtured to become a world-class center for botanical research, education, and horticulture display. During this period, the Garden has become a leader in botanical research in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and North America. 

Dr. Raven first realized more than 40 years ago that the rapid growth of the human population, consumption, and the spread of polluting technologies were threatening biological diversity in a way that had not been a focus of attention earlier. He soon became an outspoken advocate of the need for conservation throughout the world based on efforts to attain sustainability and social justice everywhere. He was described by TIME magazine as a "Hero for the Planet," and has received numerous prizes and awards, including the International Prize for Biology from the government of Japan; Volvo Environment Prize; the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement; the Sasakawa Environment Prize; and the BBVA Prize for Ecology and Conservation, Madrid. Earlier, he held Guggenheim and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowships.

In 2001, Dr. Raven received the National Medal of Science, the highest award for scientific accomplishment in the United States. He has been president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sigma Xi, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and a number of other organizations. He served for 12 years as Home Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, to which he was elected in 1977. 　He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society, of the academies of science in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Chile, China, Denmark, Georgia, Hungary, India, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine, the U.K. (the Royal Society), and of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS).  

Dr. Raven is Co-editor of the Flora of China, a joint Chinese-American international project that is leading to a contemporary, 50-volume account on all the plants of China. He was the first chair of the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation, a private, congressionally-chartered organization that funds joint research with the independent countries of the former Soviet Union. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Center for Biodiversity, Academia Sinica, Taipei, and has served as a member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee for Science and Technology in the past.

He has written numerous books and publications, both popular and scientific, including Biology of Plants (co-authored with Ray Evert and Susan Eichhorn, W. H. Freeman and Company/Worth Publishers, New York), the internationally best-selling textbook in botany, of which the seventh edition appeared in 2007; and Environment (co‑authored with Linda Berg, Wiley & Sons, New York), a leading textbook on the environment, now in its sixth edition.

Dr. Raven received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1960 after completing his undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been awarded a number of honorary degrees by universities in the United States and throughout the world, most recently from Michigan State University in 2008. 

In China, he was elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1994, and has also been named Honorary Director of the Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany and of the Herbarium, Institute of Botany, Beijing; Honorary Director, Nanjing Botanical Garden Mem. Sun Yat-sen; Honorary Chairman, Laboratory of Biodiversity and Biogeography, Kunming Institute of Botany; Honorary Director, Wuhan Institute of Botany; Honorary Professor, Honorary Professor, Peking University; Honorary Professor, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou.