Yunnan University (YNU) President Fang Jingyun (L) receives the Whittaker Distinguished Ecologist Award at the 104th annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Louisville, the United States, on Aug 12. [Photo/ynu.edu.cn]

Yunnan University (YNU) President Fang Jingyun received the Whittaker Distinguished Ecologist Award at the 104th annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Louisville, the United States, on Aug 12. 

The Whittaker Distinguished Ecologist Award recognizes an ecologist with a doctoral degree who has made outstanding contributions to the field of ecology, is not a US citizen, and resides outside the United States.

Only one person can receive the award in a single year, and Fang is the first Chinese to ever receive it. 

“His body of work advances numerous concepts that Whittaker pioneered, and also establishes new standards of scientific rigor that were impossible in Whittaker’s time”, the panel of judges said. 

Throughout his career, Fang has played a pivotal role in the advancement of ecology, in informing national and international policy, and in building a scientific community of ecologists in China. 

He has made significant contributions to our understanding of the carbon cycle, biodiversity, remote sensing, and plant stoichiometry. 

Fang has published seven books and over 370 peer-reviewed papers, including key papers in Science, Nature, and PNAS. 

His work makes use of environmental and anthropogenic gradients at the local and national scale that are conceptually similar to Whittaker’s classical gradient studies in order to increase understanding of the variation in and controls over diversity, carbon cycling, and ecosystem services.