Presentation of the First Prize
The first David Starr Jordan Prize was awarded on April 2, 1987 at Indiana University by John W. Ryan, then President of Indiana University. The opening remarks of Rollin C. Richmond constitute an introduction to the life of David Starr Jordan, and the work of the prize's first recipient, Roy M. Anderson.
In the course of preparing for this ceremony, someone told me they didn't like David Starr Jordan because he stole 12 of the then 29 Professors comprising Indiana University when he left Bloomington to become President of Stanford University. Perhaps worse, at least in Indiana, Jordan took with him a group of 35 students comprising some of the best athletes at the university. As the events of the last few days show, we seem to have made up well for the loss of student athletes. Jordan did leave Indiana with a legacy which others built upon to give us the great institution we have today. It is entirely fitting that we honor David Starr Jordan's achievements with a prize named in his honor.
David Starr Jordan come to Indiana University at the age of 28 to become Professor of Natural Sciences. Jordan had received a Master's degree from Cornell University instead of a Bachelor's because as a sophomore he was appointed an Instructor in Botany. It apparently didn't seem appropriate to the Cornell faculty just to award him an undergraduate degree so they gave him a Master's. He is the only person to have received a Master's degree from Cornell on completion of an undergraduate course of studies.
Jordan's first academic job was at Lombard College in Galesburg, Illinois. The administration of Lombard College did not think much of Jordan's Cornell progressivism and fired him after one year.
Jordan spent the summer of 1873 at a summer school run by the renowned Harvard natural historian, Louis Agassiz, on Penikese Island off the coast of Massachusetts. Although Agassiz did not subscribe to the then new idea of Darwinian evolution, he inspired Jordan with his love for the study of fishes and perhaps more importantly with a full appreciation for the value of an analytical approach to science. Both at Indiana and at Stanford, Jordan helped to convert biological research from the emphasis on natural history to one on experimentalism. This shift in tradition is really one of the important events in the history of biology and one that clearly justifies the honor we bestow on Jordan's name today.
In the fall of 1873, Jordan, however, still needed a Job. He found one at the Appleton Collegiate Institute in Wisconsin where he taught for a year. Jordan then began his Indiana period. He taught for a year at Indianapolis High School and somehow found the time to earn an M.D. degree from Indiana Medical College. Jordan got the degree because he thought it might help him with his studies of physiology. He went next to Butler University in Indianapolis where he remained for three years. Jordan used his summers to extend his knowledge of the fishes of the Midwest and south and published his first monograph titled "Manual of the vertebrates of the northern United States." This book went through 13 editions during Jordan's lifetime.
Jordan's years in Indianapolis were not particularly happy ones, at least professionally. He applied for positions at Princeton, Vassar, Williams, Michigan and Wisconsin and failed to get an offer. However, in 1879, Jordan left Butler to move south to Bloomington and almost immediately took leave of his position at Indiana University to head an expedition to the west coast to do a study of the fishes for the U.S. Fish Commission. Other expeditions followed and Jordan's scientific reputation grew. He turned down offers from Illinois and Iowa.
At the age of 34, Jordan was asked to accept the presidency of Indiana University following the sudden resignation of President Moss. Although Jordan did not think of himself as a candidate, others prevailed upon him and in January of 1885, he was appointed I.U.'s 7th President. In the space of only six years, Jordan reinvigorated the university. The energy he had once devoted solely to his science, he now also directed towards the administration of the university. Jordan took the message of the value of higher education to the people of Indiana. He personally spoke in all 92 Indiana counties and is credited with doubling the university's $35,000 budget during his tenure as President. Jordan believed that an institution is the lengthened shadow of an individual and used this philosophy to direct much of his administrative work. As President of I.U., Jordan brought a breath of fresh air to the university by relaxing the previously stringent rules which directed student and faculty behavior. His rules for students were that "No student shall set fire to one of the buildings nor shoot a member of the faculty." Jordan's belief in students' abilities to choose for themselves was reflected in his introduction of an elective curriculum.
Jordan felt that a university should be a place where students are developed to serve the larger objectives of a rising technological society. The marriage of the academic and the applied which he advocated is still a feature of the undergraduate course at both Indiana and Stanford Universities.
David Starr Jordan left Bloomington in 1891 following a personal visit from the railroad baron and Senator from California, Leland Stanford. Senator Stanford offered Jordan three times his Indiana salary to assume the leadership of a new university in the wild west of California.
At Stanford, Jordan fostered the biological sciences by among other things beginning the Hopkins Marine Station. In the 1930s, the Station was the site of a course in microbiology which attracted a group of scientists that was later to become vanguard of modern molecular genetics. The marked successes of Stanford University in many academic areas is well known today and can be traced in part to the influences which Jordan had in establishing the institution.
At the turn of the century, Jordan directed much of his interest and time towards world affairs and the cause of world peace. He traveled and spoke in Europe against war, aggression and imperialism until the outbreak of World War I when he returned to Stanford to resume his studies of fishes.
Jordan possessed an ability for leadership which is rare. He contributed directly to the development of two great institutions of higher learning and is still remembered at Cornell for his contributions there. His foresight about the direction which the sciences should take and his ability to gather scholars who shared this view can be linked to the rapid expansion of the biological sciences today. Jordan would be pleased by the emphasis on young scientists which the David Starr Jordan Prize carries and would surely be delighted by the choice of the first recipient.
The idea for the David Starr Jordan Prize stems from conversations between Dr. Gary Sojka, then Chairman of the Biology Department at IU and Presidents Kennedy of Stanford, Rhodes of Cornell, and Ryan of Indiana University. They felt that the three institutions with which Jordan was most closely associated should initiate a prize for work in the disciplines to which Jordan contributed - evolution, ecology, population or organismal biology. Dr. Ryan asked me to help get the prize established and suggested that its emphasis should be to reward remarkable young scientists before their reputations were fully established. Thus the guidelines for the prize state that the recipient should normally be less than 40 years old with not more than 10 cumulative years of active research after receipt of the Ph.D. The Presidents of Cornell, Indiana and Stanford Universities agreed to endow the prize, and appointed a small committee of representatives from each of their institutions. The guidelines for the selection of the prize recipient and announcements of the prize were made in major journals throughout the world. In order to insure that the prize would carry a substantial monetary award, the committee recommended that it be given only every three years. The institution at which the award ceremony will be held will rotate among the three endowing institutions. The second David Starr Jordan Prize will be given at Stanford University in 1990. As the current Prize committee nears the completion of its work, we are confident that the selection we have made for the first David Starr Jordan Prize will establish this award as a major and unique achievement for young scientists working in the research areas pioneered by Jordan himself.
[Introduction of Professor Anderson]
Mr. President, it is an honor for the Committee and me to present to you as the first Prize recipient, Dr. Roy M. Anderson, Professor of Parasite Ecology of the Imperial College of the University of London. Dr. Anderson was nominated for this award by Professor Robert M. May of Princeton University. Over the past ten years, the population-level properties of host-parasite associations including those bacteria, protozoans and parasitic worms. His research combines mathematical modelling with carefully-designed laboratory studies all directed toward elucidating the overall dynamical behavior of specific host-parasite interactions.
Dr. Anderson has refined conventional mathematical models for viral and bacterial infections of childhood, and undertaken quantitative analyses of public immunization programs. He has also pioneered new models for hookworm in developing countries to help direct chemotherapeutic control. Most recently, he has combined population genetics with epidemiology, to illuminate evolutionary aspects of host-parasite associations. This work questions the currently accepted dogma that in general the endpoint of host parasite evolution is not necessarily an avirulent or harmless parasite.
Roy Anderson's work is notable for the way the individual components of the mathematical models are grounded upon, and tested against, carefully designed laboratory and field experiments. Every effort is made to make controlled tests of the conclusions emerging from the theory. In this way, a detailed and confident understanding can be built, so that those models can be used as tools in the exploration of public health strategies, as well as providing basic understanding.
The work of Roy Anderson and Robert May on a mathematical model predicting the epidemiology of the AIDS virus was recently reviewed in the journal, Science. The reviewer noted that the importance of Anderson and May's work lies in its new approach to the AIDS epidemic. Few need reminding any longer of the need to explore all avenues in our efforts to contain the AIDS virus.
The significance of Anderson's work and his suitability for the David Starr Jordan Prize are best summed up in a letter which the committee received from Sir Richard Southwood of Oxford University. "It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that Dr. Anderson's quantitative approach to host parasite relationships has already become a principal focus in the field of parasitology. His remarkable achievements seem to coincide exactly with your definition of the qualities required of the prize winner."
Mr. President, the David Starr Jordan Prize Committee is pleased to present Professor Roy Malcolm Anderson to you and Presidents Kennedy and Rhodes to receive the first David Starr Jordan Prize.