The most coevolutionary animal of them all

Abstract

The Crafoord Prize for 1984 was awarded in biosciences with particular emphasis on ecology. The field selected was "coevolution - the mutual adaption of organism populations in the natural environment". The prizewinner, Professor Daniel H. Janzen, Philadelphia, USA was chosen " for his imaginative and stimulating research into coevolutionary connections and processes, through which numerous researchers have been inspired to further work in this field" . At a ceremony on October 3, 1984, the rewarded work was presented and Professor Janzen received his prize and the Crafoord medal in gold from the hands of the donor, Mrs Anna-Greta Crafoord. Before the ceremony, Daniel Janzen delivered his Crafoord lecture "The most coevolutional animal of them all". The text is printed on the following pages. The Crafoord Prize was first awarded in 1982. The discipline was mathematics and the field nonlinear differential equations. Joint prizewinners were Professors Vladimir I. Arnold of the USSR and Louis Nirenberg of the USA for their valuable work in this field. In the following year the geoscience prize was awarded to Professors Edward N. Lorenz and Henry Stommel, both from the USA, for their unique contributions to a deeper understanding of the large-scale movements of the atmosphere and the sea respectively.