Biological sciences professor named national fellow

A Mississippi State University biological sciences professor is a new Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Jerome A. Jackson will be inducted at the AAAS Annual Meeting in February. He was honored for his expertise in avian behavioral ecology, especially for his work on endangered woodpeckers and other species, for service as a science editor and for interpretation of science to the public.

Jackson received the 1990 Mississippi Academy of Sciences award for outstanding contributions to science. The honor followed his lengthy research effort for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to determine whether the ivory-billed woodpecker is extinct in the Southeast.

A faculty member since 1970, he is a regular contributor to Birder's World magazine and a past editor of several professional journals. Jackson co-hosts a weekly nature segment on the evening news of WCBI-TV, a CBS affiliate in Columbus.

The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Individual members are nominated by the Steering Group of their respective disciplines and voted on by the AAAS Council.

Founded in 1848, the Washington, D.C.-based AAAS represents the world's largest federation of scientists and has more than 144,000 individual members.