The American Society of Naturalists and the Society for the Study of Evolution are deeply saddened to convey that George W. Gilchrist, a long-time member of our community, recently passed away.
George earned his BS at Arizona State University working on butterflies with Ron Rutowski, his MS at Brown on damselflies with Jon Waage, and his PhD at the University of Washington with Joel Kingsolver working on the evolution of thermal sensitivity (1993). He then completed a postdoc with Ray Huey at the University of Washington on experimental evolution of thermal sensitivity in Drosophila. George extended his work on the evolutionary genetics of Drosophila while in faculty positions at Clarkson University and the College of William and Mary before becoming a long-time Program Director (Division of Environmental Biology) at the National Science Foundation. For 10 years, George was the liaison between the Education and Outreach Committees of ASN and SSE. His impact on our science and young scientists has been exceptional.
George’s family has asked that a fund be created in his honor to support additional graduate student research and travel to the annual Evolution meetings.
Donations in George’s honor can be made at this link “George W. Gilchrist Student Support Fund” on the ASN donations page
or via this link https://payments.evolutionsociety.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=4 for the SSE donations page.