Holmes Rolston, III

Biographical Notes

Holmes Rolston is University Distinguished Professor of philosophy at Colorado State University. He has written six books, acclaimed in critical notice in both professional journals and the national press. The more recent are: Genes, Genesis and God (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Science and Religion: A Critical Survey (Random House, McGraw Hill, Harcourt Brace), Philosophy Gone Wild(Prometheus Books) Environmental Ethics (Temple University Press), and Conserving Natural Value (Columbia University Press). He has edited Biology, Ethics, and the Origins of Life (Jones and Bartlett, Wadsworth). He has written chapters in eighty other books and over one hundred articles.

Scholars have cited and discussed in print Rolston's work over two thousand times. His articles have been reprinted and anthologized one hundred times. (See publications lists on home-page). His books have been used as texts in a hundred and fifty colleges and universities. See list.  His work is published in Australian, Canadian, British, German, Scandinavian, Slovenian, South African, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian presses and journals, translated, reviewed, or cited in journals and books in French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Finnish, Danish, Czechoslovakian, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovenian, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese. Environmental Ethics, Philosophy Gone Wild, and Genes, Genesis and God are in Chinese translation.

Rolston was awarded the Templeton Prize in Religion in 2003, awarded by H.R.H. Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace. He was awarded the Mendel Medal by Villanova University in 2005. Rolston has spoken as distinguished lecturer on all seven continents. He gave the opening conference address to the Royal Institute of Philosophy annual conference, Cardiff, Wales, 1993. He was Distinguished Lecturer in Beijing, China, at the invitation of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of Philosophy. He participated by invitation in pre-conferences and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, 1992, where he was an official observer. He spoke at the World Congress of Philosophy, Moscow, 1993, and again in Boston, 1998. He was distinguished Visiting Professor of Bioethics, Yale University, 2005-2006.

Rolston was distinguished lecturer at the 28th Nobel Conference, 1992, at Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota, authorized by the Nobel Foundation, Stockholm. The American Philosophical Association named him a distinguished speaker at their Pacific Division, with a three hour panel devoted to his work. He was awarded the Distinguished Visiting Russell Fellow at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. In 1991, a research conference was held in Berkeley devoted to his work, and the results have been published. He was Distinguished Scholar leading a National Endowment for the Humanities colloquium at North Idaho College. He delivered the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1997/1998. He was awarded a Doctor of Letters (D. Litt.), Davidson College, 2002.

Rolston has been an invited lecturer at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, at Georgetown University, at Vanderbilt University, Ohio State University, the University of Georgia, the University of Colorado Law School, the University of Oregon Law School, California State University, Washington State University, Pennsylvania State University, Harvard University, Yale University Law School, Washington and Lee University, University of Michigan, the University of Manchester, Oxford University, the University of Bergen, the University of Oslo, the University of Helsinki, Uppsala University, Arhus University, Odense University, Bucharest University, Hanazono College, Kyoto University in Japan, the University of Guelph, at four Chinese and eleven Australian universities.  See list.  He spoke at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. He has been a guest lecturer for the Council for Philosophical Studies. In July-August 1995 he was Visiting Lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. He was a plenary speaker at the 1994 40th Anniversary Conference of the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel. Earlier, Rolston was named Visiting Scholar at the Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions.

Rolston was named by Macmillan Company the area editor for environmental ethics in the Encyclopedia of Bioethics, Edition II. He was named by the U. S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment to an Advisory Board for a study of biodiversity and legislation. The American Academy of Religion elected him president of the Rocky Mountain - Great Plains Region. Rolston is listed in Who's Who in the World (23rd edition, 2006, and earlier), Who's Who in America (59th edition, 2005, and earlier), in Who's Who in Religion (3rd edition, 1986), Who's Who in Science and Engineering (8th edition, 2005-2006, and earlier), and in Who's Who in American Education (7th edition, 2006-2007, and earlier). He is past-president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics and has served on the Board of Governors of the Society for Conservation Biology. He serves on the Advisory Board, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Program of Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion.

Rolston's work is published by a variety of presses--from commercial academic publishers (Prentice-Hall, Random House, McGraw Hill, Routledge, Academic Press, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Blackwell, Jones and Bartlett, Sinauer), through university presses (Yale University Press, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, University of Wisconsin Press, Pennsylvania State University Press and the University of Queensland [Australia] Press, Temple University Press, University of Arizona Press, Columbia University Press), through specialized philosophy publishers (Prometheus Books, Philosophical Library), religious presses (Abingdon, Fortress, Westminster/John Knox), and general publishers (United States Government Printing Office, United Nations Environment Programme, Sierra Club Books, Westview Press, Island Press). He is the author of two dozen articles in encyclopedias and companions.

Rolston has published across a wide spectrum of journals--from leading philosophy journals (Ethics; Philosophy and Phenomenological Research; Inquiry; The Monist, Biology and Philosophy;Canadian Philosophical Reviews; British Journal of Aesthetics, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism) and journals of theology (Scottish Journal of Theology, Theology Today,Interpretation; through specialized philosophy journals (Philosophy East and West; Environmental Ethics; Zygon; Journal of Medicine and Philosophy) to leading science journals (BioScience;Natural History, Conservation Biology, Journal of Forestry, Quarterly Review of Biology, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine,Biodiversity and Conservation), to professional law journals (University of Colorado Law Review, Yale Journal of International Law) and intellectual religious journals (Christian Century;Commonweal; Christianity Today). He has published in American Forests and The Environmental Professional.

Rolston has served as a consultant with over two dozen conservation and policy groups, including the U. S. Congress and a Presidential Commission. He is a member of the Working Group on Ethics of the World Conservation Union (IUCN). He is a founder and the associate editor of Environmental Ethics, a refereed professional journal now in its seventeenth year, and on the editorial board of Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion, Public Affairs Quarterly, Environmental Values, The South African Journal of Philosophy / Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Wysbegeerte, Socijalna Ekologija (Zabreg, Croatia), the International Journal of Wilderness, and Conservation Biology. He serves on a half dozen other editorial boards. He has been a recipient of NEH and NSF awards. He won the Pennock Award for Distinguished Service at Colorado State University, the Dean's Award for Creativity and Excellence in the Humanities, and has been named University Distinguished Professor.

Rolston's work has received critical notice in The Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times, and other national papers. He has published in The Denver Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and New York Newsday