Biography
Mittermeier was born in The Bronx, New York City. He received his B.A. (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) from Dartmouth in 1971 and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Biological Anthropology in 1977.
He has conducted fieldwork for over 30 years on three continents and in more than 20 countries in mainly tropical locations, notably Brazil, Suriname and Madagascar. Mittermeier's fieldwork has been focused on primates, protected areas, and other conservation issues and he is considered an expert on such topics as biological diversity and its value to humanity, ecosystem conservation, tropical biology and species conservation.
Mittermeier has formally discovered several monkey species. He was honored for his work in Madagascar in 2006 with the naming of a newly discovered species of mouse lemur Microcebus mittermeieri, or Mittermeier's Mouse Lemur. Russell Mittermeier is the author of Lemurs of Madagascar, a comprehensive field guide on the country's flagship species. He is also notable as one of relatively few scientists to argue in favor of serious study of the North American Bigfoot phenomenon.
Mittermeier was named president of Conservation International in 1989. In addition to his work at CI, Mittermeier has served as Chairman of the IUCN-World Conservation Union Species Survival Commission's Primate Specialist Group since 1977, and as the Chairman of the World Bank's Task Force of Biological Diversity in 1988 and 1989. He also serves as President of the Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation and an Adjunct Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Prior to coming to Conservation International, he was Vice President for Science at the World Wildlife Fund.
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