Francisco J. Ayala
NCSE congratulates Francisco J. Ayala for winning the 2015 Stephen Jay Gould Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution. A member of NCSE's board of directors and of its Advisory Council, Ayala is University Professor, the Donald Bren Professor of Biological Sciences, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. Ayala received the Gould Prize and presented a public lecture on "Copernicus and Darwin: Two Revolutions" on June 26, 2015, at the Evolution 2015 conference in Guarujá, Brazil.
Ayala received the National Medal for Science, the nation's highest award for lifetime achievement in scientific research, in 2001, and the Templeton Prize in 2010, as well as honorary degrees from twenty-one universities worldwide. He testified for the plaintiffs in McLean v. Arkansas, a 1982 case challenging the constitutionality of a law requiring equal time for creation science in the public schools, and was the lead author of Science, Evolution, and Creationism (National Academies Press, 2008.
The Stephen Jay Gould Prize is awarded annually by the SSE "to recognize individuals whose sustained and exemplary efforts have advanced public understanding of evolutionary science and its importance in biology, education, and everyday life in the spirit of Stephen Jay Gould." NCSE's Eugenie C. Scott was the recipient of the first Gould Prize, in 2009, followed by Sean B. Carroll in 2010, Kenneth R. Miller in 2011, David Quammen in 2012, Judy Scotchmoor in 2013, and Steve Jones in 2014.