It is announced that Professor Steven L. Chown, Head of the School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Australia has been elected the President of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) at its 34th biennial meeting that ended today in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Prior to moving to Australia, Steven Chown was a long-serving member of the South African National Antarctic Programme as a scientific researcher commencing with his participation in Marion Island’s 40th team in the summer of 1983/84 as an assistant entomologist. This was followed by BSc and BSc Hons degrees earned from the University of Pretoria in 1985 and 1986 and a PhD in sub-Antarctic entomology from the same university in 1989, following a second sojourn on Marion Island with the M43 and M44 teams in 1986 and 1987.
Steven was then employed successively as a Lecturer and Professor by the University of Pretoria between 1989 and 2001, after which he took up a professorship at Stellenbosch University. In 2004 he became the inaugural Director of the DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology, a position he held until mid-2012, when he moved to Australia.
He has contributed significantly to the fields of macroecology, community ecology and invasion biology. Most of his work has focused on insects and other invertebrates, although he also works on mammals, birds, reptiles and plants. Antarctic and sub-Antarctic systems and their biodiversity have formed a significant focus of his work
Steven’s work has been internationally recognized, most prominently through the inaugural award of the Martha T. Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica in 2009. His co-authored book on insect physiology and ecology won the 2009 Bill Venter/Altron Literary Award for the most outstanding South African natural science text published in the preceding four years. In 1997 he received the South African Antarctic Gold Medal (sadly now defunct) and the Zoological Society of Southern Africa Gold Medal in 2009.
Steven Chown has been involved with SCAR for a number of decades, notably as SCAR’s representative to the Committee for Environmental Protection of the Antarctic Treaty System and also as Australia’s Delegate. Along with John Cooper, Steven initiated ALSA’s precursor project and remains a collaborator on the current legacy project.
The Antarctic Legacy of South Africa project congratulates Steven Chown on his latest appointment and wishes him much success in his role as the latest President of SCAR.
Feature photograph: Steven Chown with ALSA’s Anché Louw at the SCAR Open Science Conference in Kuala Lumpur last week
John Cooper, Antarctic Legacy of South Africa, Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, 30 August 2016
