The address will commence at 18:00 on Thursday, 11 August 2016, in the Sanlam Auditorium of the UP Conference Centre on the Hatfield Campus.

Prof Owen-Smith received his MSc degree from the University of Natal in 1965 and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1973 for a study on the behavioural ecology of the white rhinoceros. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pretoria, he took up a lectureship at the University of Rhodesia (now the University of Zimbabwe) for its master’s programme in Tropical Resource Ecology. He joined Wits University in 1979 as Research Officer, first in Applied Mathematics, then in Botany. In 1987 he was appointed Senior Lecturer in the Department of Zoology, being promoted to Reader in 1991 and Research Professor in African Ecology in 1997, which position he held until his retirement at the end of 2007. His research field encompasses the ecology of large mammalian herbivores, their interactions with vegetation, and savanna ecology more generally. He has supervised studies in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique and South Africa. In 1999 he was awarded an A-rating by the National Research Foundation. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and Honorary Life Member of the Ecological Society of America. He received Gold Medals from the Zoological Society of South Africa and the Southern African Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Bill Venter/Altron Literary Award for his book Adaptive herbivore ecology. He has written or edited five books and has had over 145 articles published in scientific journals or as book chapters. He is currently Research Professor Emeritus in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, and still actively engaged in research.

A reception will be held after the address where guests can interact further with Prof Owen-Smith.

RSVP to Mrs Karin Fischer at [email protected] for catering purposes.