Thomas E. Lovejoy was elected University Professor at George Mason University in March 2010. He previously held the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment and was President from 2002-2008. An ecologist who has worked in the Brazilian Amazon since 1965, he works at the interface of science and environmental policy. Starting in the 1970s, he helped to bring attention to the issue of tropical deforestation and in 1980 published the first estimate of global extinction rates in the Global 2000 Report to the President. He conceived the idea for the long-term study on forest fragmentation in the Amazon, starting in 1978, which is the largest experiment in landscape ecology, the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems project (also known as the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project). Professor Lovejoy is credited with coining the term “Biological Diversity”, he originated the concept of debt-for-nature swaps, and he has researched the interaction between climate change and biodiversity for more than 30 years. He is the founder of the public television series, “Nature”.
