Holmes Rolston III

HOLMES ROLSTON, III, is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University in Fort Collins , Colorado .

Rolston is regarded as the father of environmental ethics and his work and efforts on behalf of the environment have been honored by invitations to lecture on all seven continents.
He has a degree in physics and mathematics from Davidson College, a divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, and a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Edinburgh. He also holds a masters degree in philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh.

Rolston served as a minister in the Appalachian Mountains of western Virginia near the Tennessee and North Carolina borders. While serving as minister, he attended classes at East Tennessee State University, explored the biology, mineralogy and geology of the southern Appalachian Mountains, becoming a recognized naturalist and bryologist (the study of mosses) There he worked to conserve wildlife, preserve Mount Rogers and Roan Mountain, and to maintain and relocate the Appalachian Trail.

Rolston was awarded the 2003 Templeton Prize, which is the world’s most prestigious award in religion, given by Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace. The Templeton Prize recognized Rolston’s work on the intrinsic value of nature and on the relationship between science and religion. He was awarded the Mendel Medal by Villanova University in 2005, recognizing his work in the philosophy of genetics. He gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1997-1998.

Rolston's books have been acclaimed in 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, with a new edition, Templeton, 2006), Philosophy Gone Wild (Prometheus Books) Environmental Ethics (Temple University Press), and Conserving Natural Value (Columbia University Press). He was an editor of the Encyclopedia of Bioethics.

His books have been used as texts in a hundred and fifty colleges and universities, and his articles reprinted over two hundred times. His works have been translated into a dozen languages.

Rolston was an official observer at the 1992 United Nations’ Rio Summit on the Environment and addressed the World Congress of Philosophy in Boston in 1998.  Later that year he traveled to China to speak at the first All China Conference on Environment and Development and at four Chinese universities. In 2000, Rolston returned to Brazil to address the Second Brazilian Congress on Conservation on the intrinsic values of nature. He says that his favorite continent is Africa, and he was recently in the midst of one and half million wildebeest there.

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.  He has an article on human uniqueness and human dignity in an anthology prepared by the President's Council on Bioethics.

Avocationally, Rolston is a hiker,  backpacker, and field naturalist  His website is http://lamar.colostate.edu/~rolston