Download the Animal Geography Specialty Group Newsletter, Vol. 1, Issue 1

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Jane Goodall to Receive Atlas Award at AAG Meeting

The Association of American Geographers (AAG) is pleased to announce that Jane Goodall has been named the first recipient of the AAG Atlas Award. Dr. Goodall will receive the award at the AAG Annual Meeting on April 16, 2010, in Washington, D.C., where she will deliver a presentation for the media and to an expected gathering of more than 7,000 geographers and other attendees from around the world.

The Atlas Award is designed to recognize and celebrate outstanding accomplishments that advance world understanding in exceptional ways. The image of Atlas bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders is a powerful metaphor for this award program, as our nominees are those who have taken the weight of the world on their shoulders and moved it forward, whether in science, politics, scholarship, the arts, or in war and peace.

Jane Goodall truly embodies the ideals and goals of the AAG Atlas Award, and the AAG is delighted that she will inaugurate this new award. Dr. Goodall began her landmark research on chimpanzees at Gombe Stream in Tanzania in 1960, under the mentorship of anthropologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey. Her work there became the foundation for most subsequent primate research and led to redefined concepts about the relationship between humans and animals.

Please join Jane Goodall and the AAG in Washington, D.C. on April 16, 2010, to celebrate her extraordinary accomplishments of the past half century, and to discuss with her and with geographers from around the world our plans for a sustainable future for our planet.

Read more about Dr. Goodall and her accomplishments in the September issue of the AAG Newsletter or on the AAG Website.