IU’s newest Distinguished Prof to receive Russian award 92 years after its creation

Kowalevsky

The Council of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists has awarded the Medal of Alexander Kowalevsky to Raff, director of the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute at IU Bloomington. The society also elected Raff as an honorary member. He is one of eight scientists in seven countries to share in the honor.

The award cites Raff as “one of the most distinguished scientists of the 20th century in the field of comparative zoology and evolutionary embryology.” The St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, founded in 1868, is one of the oldest scientific societies in Russia. Kowalevsky was Russia’s leading 19th-century experimental biologist and a Darwinian who studied invertebrate development toward finding the nearest relatives to the vertebrates.

Although the medal was cast about 90 years ago, it has never been awarded until now because of the disruptions of World War I, the Russian Revolution and ensuing civil war, and the Soviet era. The original medal was saved in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and in the State Mint, where even the original casting mold was preserved. The St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists recently discovered that the original mold existed and decided to reinstate the international award using the original medal design.

Raff’s research has concentrated on the use of gene sequence data to understand relationships among animal body plans, and on the study of how developmental mechanisms evolve, using marine embryos.