Bill Durham in Patagonia

Bill Durham, ’71, is an innovative researcher and teacher who has focused on two themes for most of his career: (1) on putting principles of evolution to work in understanding and sustaining biological and cultural diversity in the world today; and (2) on identifying the social dimensions of contemporary environmental problems and working with local people to help solve them. This work has taken him to fieldwork throughout Central and South America, and to selected sites in East Africa. Bill has received five awards for research and teaching at Stanford, including one by vote of the students, and was one of the first recipients of the MacArthur Prize Fellowship (1983). He is author or editor of a good list of books including his latest, Exuberant Life: An Evolutionary Approach to Conservation in Galápagos, published in 2021, which earned a silver medallion in the 2022 Prose Awards.

In 1992, Bill worked with Stanford Travel/Study to create a series of programs providing experiential learning for students in Sophomore College together with Stanford alumni. He travels to the Galápagos Islands almost every year with students and alumni and believes that educational travel is one of the most enriching experiences one can have. Bill led our last field seminar in Patagonia ten years ago and is excited to return. He has long held a special interest in Patagonia, in part because the region so influenced the young Charles Darwin through its flora, fauna, and fossils, and in part because of its spectacular parks and conservation areas (all topics of lectures during this program).

• Governing Member, elected in 2023, the Charles Darwin Foundation of Galápagos

• Senior Fellow and Co-director, Emeritus, of the Osa & Golfito Sustainability Initiative in Costa Rica, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford

• Former Director, Program in Human Biology, and former Chair, Department of Anthropological Sciences

• Editor for sixteen years of the Annual Review of Anthropology

• Fellowships: Yang and Yamazaki University Fellow, MacArthur Prize, Harry Frank Guggenheim, California Academy of Sciences, Danforth Foundation and National Science Foundation

• Teaching awards: Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel, Walter J. Gores, ASSU, Rhodes, Bing Fellow, and Richard W. Lyman

• BS, Biological Sciences, 1971, Stanford University

• MS, Zoology, 1973, and PhD, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, 1977, University of Michigan