Tech's Wallace honored at Cornell U.
By Sally Harris
Spectrum Volume 18 Issue 12 - November 9, 1995
Bruce Wallace, university distinguished professor emeritus of biology at Virginia Tech, was honored with the Bruce Wallace Symposium at Cornell University recently.
The symposium celebrated Wallace's distinguished career and his many years of service to Cornell University, where he was professor of genetics from 1961 to 1981, and to its evolutionary biologists. Wallace has earned an international reputation for his work in population genetics.
Wallace's colleagues and former students Richard Lewontin, James Crow, Stephen O'Brien, James Fogleman, and Chip Aquadro made presentations. Will Provine, a colleague, gave a summary of Wallace's "illustrious career and his many significant contributions to experimental population genetics." Ross MacIntyre, the symposium organizer, was one of Wallace's postdoctoral students.
Wallace has earned many awards, including a Senior U.S. Scientist Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and a Fulbright award to lecture in Egypt and Yugoslavia. He was an advisor to the U.S. Delegation at the First Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva and a member of the World Health Organization's Study Group on the Effect of Radiation on Human Heredity in Copenhagen.
At Virginia Tech, Wallace is known for the series of Worldwatch Seminars he arranged to call attention to environmental issues. He also spearheaded the drive to get Virginia universities to endorse the Talloires Declaration calling for the education of students about environmental matters.