UVic tops province in Royal Society appointments

Six UVic faculty members have been elected as 1999 Fellows in the prestigious Royal Society of Canada, the most scholars selected from any of the province's universities. Montréal's McGill University and the University of Toronto were the only other Canadian universities to have as many faculty members honored.

Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada is considered the highest Canadian accolade for a senior academic. Founded 117 years ago, it differs from most scholarly and scientific societies in that it encompasses a broad range of disciplines--natural and applied sciences, medicine, social sciences and humanities. The society's mandate is to promote and develop learning and research in the arts and sciences through its three Academies: the Academy of Science/Académie des sciences, the Académie des lettres et des sciences humaines, and the Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences.

The new Royal Society Fellows from UVic are:

Dr. Neena Chappell, director of UVic's Centre on Aging, who has made outstanding contributions to social gerontology and to debates on health services and health policy. Her research on social support has documented the major, but insufficiently recognized, work done by women as providers of informal care to older adults.

Prof. Jack Hodgins, who was born and raised in the Comox Valley and has been teaching fiction at the UVic department of writing since 1985. He won the 1999 B.C. Book Prize for his latest novel, Broken Ground. He has published numerous novels and short story collections, as well as a travel book and a guide to writing fiction. Other honours include the Governer General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize.

Dr. Angus McLaren, a historian, who enjoys a world-wide reputation as an innovative and productive researcher in the social history of medicine, particularly the history of fertility control and eugenics, and the history of sexuality. The impact of his findings on traditional attitudes towards abortion and fertility have been cited by government committees in both the United States and Canada. He is the leading expert on the cultural history of fertility control in western Europe, and has written pioneering studies in the social history of medicine in Canada.

Dr. Nancy Turner, an internationally renowned ethnobotanist, whose research on the significance of native plants in First Nations culture for medicine, food and other uses has won her many scholarly honours and citizenship awards, including the Order of British Columbia.Her collaborative work with indigenous experts and her documentation of the richness and importance of traditional ecological knowledge make significant contributions to environmental planning and management.

Dr. Ian Putnam, a mathematician who has made outstanding contributions to the theory of dynamical systems. He has shown that the orbits of such systems can be completely determined by algebraic methods&emdash;methods for which he made instrumental developments. His work has changed the face of dynamical systems theory.

Dr. Don VandenBerg, an authority on how galaxies evolve through research that attempts to determine the age difference between the youngest and oldest clusters of galaxies. His other honours include: B.C. Science Council Gold Medalist, E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship, and the Killam Research fellowship.

This year's new Fellows from UVic will join 54 colleagues from across Canada at an induction ceremony in Ottawa on November 19. Including the latest inductees, UVic has 23 current faculty members elected to the Royal Society.

-- 30 --