Laurie R. Godfrey

Evolutionary biologist Laurie R. Godfrey is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts.  She joined the anthropology faculty there as an assistant professor in 1977, immediately after receiving her Ph.D. in biological anthropology from Harvard, and was promoted to professor in 1991; for three years beginning in 2002 she was also the associate director of its Interdisciplinary Program in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology.  

She has been a strong proponent for the teaching of evolution in public schools, and in 1983 UMass honored her with its Presidential Writer's Award for Scientists Confront Creationism, the first book she had edited. Since then, she has edited another book on this topic: What Darwin Began: Modern Darwinian and Non-Darwinian Perspectives on Evolution (1985).

Laurie R. Godfrey has been a Visiting Instructor in Anthropology at SUNY Binghamton, a Visiting Assistant Professor and Curator of Collections in Cornell University's Department of Anthropology, and an NSF Visiting Professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at SUNY Stony Brook.  Her awards include appointment as an Honorary Fellow of the American Association of University Women (1983), the Humanist Contributions to Science Award (1988) from the American Humanist Association, and appointment as the Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer (1997-99). She is also an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.