GSA's (Geological Society of America) Public Service Medal is awarded each year in honor of two dynamic scientists, Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker, whose scientific work and generosity in sharing it inspired and stimulated the public's curiosity about the universe around them. This year's award is shared by two similarly dynamic scientists, G. Brent Dalrymple and Eugenie C. Scott, who have been highly effective in battling the inclusion of "creation science" and its various disguised forms within our public science-education curriculum. They also have been outstanding spokespersons for promoting the value of teaching evolution, the scientific evidence for the age of the earth, and the concept of science as a way of knowing.
Genie left an academic career in 1987 to become executive director of the National Center for Science Education, a not-for-profit membership organization in Oakland, California, that works to improve the teaching of evolution and of science as a way of knowing. Genie is in great demand as a spokesperson for this cause and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs. She has received numerous awards for her efforts, including the Issac Asimov Science Award from the American Humanist Association and the Hugh H. Hefner First Amendment Award from the Playboy Foundation. She is a member of the California Academy of Sciences and is president- elect of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.
Brent is a geochronologist who, throughout his career at the U.S. Geological Survey and Oregon State University, has been involved in the development, improvement, and application of isotopic-dating techniques. Brent also has been active in the creation vs. evolution debate for more than two decades. He served as an expert witness for the American Civil Liberties Union in an Arkansas creationism trial and in the Louisiana lawsuit that resulted in the Supreme Court banning, as unconstitutional, all "equal-time for creationism" laws. Brent is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and is past-president of the American Geophysical Union.
Reprinted with permission from citationist Mary Lou Zoback