James Hanken

James Hanken (born July 14, 1952 in New York City , New York ) is an American herpetologist , university professor and museum director.

Life

1973 acquired Hanken the Bachelor of Arts at the University of California, Berkeley , and in 1980 he was at the same university with a thesis Morphological and Genetic Investigations of Miniaturization in salamanders (genus Thorius) for Ph.D. PhD. From 1980 to 1983 he completed his post-doctoral phase at Dalhousie University in Halifax , Canada with the support of a Killam grant . From 1983 to 1990 he was assistant professor, from 1990 to 1994 adjunct professor and from 1994 to 1999 full professor of biology at the University of Colorado Boulder . Since 1999 he has been Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at the Department of Organismic and Molecular Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, as well as Curator of Herpetology and Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology . From 1996 to 1998 he was an editor for the American Zoologist magazine .

Hanken deals with evolutionary morphology, developmental biology and systematics . Most of the work focuses on amphibians , but otherwise covers a wide range of topics, taxa, and methods. The latter range from laboratory-based molecular analyzes to extensive field studies . His research interests include the development of the facial skull structures in vertebrates , the developmental basis of evolutionary biology , the systematics, taxonomy and evolution of African frogs and Neotropical and Asian salamanders as well as the decline of amphibians and their conservation. Hanken conducts research programs in Mexico , China and Africa .

Hanken has written over 100 scientific articles. He is also a photographer whose photos have been published in the journals Natural History and Audubon , among others . He is also a member of the online encyclopedia Encyclopedia of Life .

Hanken was involved in the first descriptions of the salamander genus Taruga and eight species of the genus Bolitoglossa , three species of the genus Pseudoeurycea , 18 species of the genus Thorius and the species Cynops fudingensis , Pachytriton xanthospilos and Paramesotriton yunwuensis .

Hanken has been married since 1984 and has a son and a daughter.

Memberships

Hanken is a member and served on the board of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists from 1983 to 1988 . He is also a member of Sigma Xi , the Society for the Study of Evolution , the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology , the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles , the International Society of Vertebrate Morphology , of which he was President from 2001 to 2004. the Herpetologists' League and the Society for Developmental Biology . From 1996 to 2000 he was a committee member of the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC

Honors and Dedication Names

In 1990 Hanken Nils von Hofsten was Lecturer at Uppsala University and in 1996 John L. and Margaret B. Gompertz Professor of Systems Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1997 he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . The salamander species Thorius hankeni and the frog species Pseudophilautus hankeni are named after Hanken .

literature

• James Hanken American Men & Women of Science: A Biographical Directory of Today's Leaders in Physical, Biological, and Related Sciences, Gale, 2008. Biography In Context, accessed February 23, 2019

Web links

• Harvard University Employee Profile
• Literature by and about James Hanken in the WorldCat bibliographic database