Robert Kates Receives Top Honor from Geographers Association

katespicRobert Kates, Presidential Professor of Sustainability Science at UMaine, has received the 2014 AAG Stanley Brunn Award for Creativity in Geography from the Association of American Geographers.

The association noted it “proudly confers this award to Kates in recognition of the many ways that his unrelenting creativity, energy, and care for the world around him have led him to enhance and ennoble nature-society research as one of geography’s fundamental contributions to knowledge, at the same time improving prospects for sustainability from the global to the local scales. The Brunn Award for Creativity recognizes the significant impact of his creativity in making this world a better place.”

The award is given annually to an individual geographer or team of geographers that has demonstrated originality, creativity and significant intellectual breakthroughs in geography. Kates’ colleagues seconded the motion.

“Bob’s research has reshaped the way we ask pressing questions at the interface of nature and society, be it climate change, natural hazards, or human welfare. One recognition of his creative ideas is the rapid growth of sustainability programs worldwide,” said Shaleen Jain, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Among other major recognitions of Kates’ scholarly career: he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975; in 1981 he was awarded a MacArthur Prize Fellowship or “Genius Grant” and in 1991 he was awarded the National Medal of Science in a ceremony at the White House. Kates also received AAG Honors, the highest awards offered by the Association of American Geographers, in 1979.

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