Thomas Dyer Seeley

Thomas Dyer Seeley was a winner of the Humboldt Prize in Biology in 2001.

Background

Seeley was born on June 17, 1952. He went to elementary, middle and high schools in Ithaca, NY. He married Robin Hadlock Seeley and the couple had two children.

Education

Seeley earned his A.B. (summa cum laude) in Chemistry from Dartmouth College in 1974 and, four years later, his Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University.

Appointments

Seeley held the following academic appointments:

Year	Appointment
1978-1980	Junior Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University
1980-1986	Assistant and Associate Professor, Yale University
1986-1992	Assistant and Associate Professor, Cornell University
1992–present	Professor of Biology, Cornell University
1993-1994	Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin
2001-2004	Visiting Professor, University of Würzburg
2005-08, 13-14	Chairman, Cornell University, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior
2013-	Horace White Professor in Biology, Cornell University

Honors and awards

In 1966 Seeley was an Eagle Scout. In 1974 he received the Hartshorne Chemistry Medal from Dartmouth College. Four years later he was elected a Junior Fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows and in 1983 he was awarded the Morse Prize Fellowship from Yale University. For a year from 1992, he was a Guggenheim Fellow and then the next year got a Fellowship from Berlin’s Institute for Advanced Study. In 1994 he received the Hambleton Award from the Eastern Apicultural Society.

A species of bee was named after him Neocorynurella seeleyi in 1997 and a year later he received the Gold Medal for the Best Science Book, (The Wisdom of the Hive). Seeley received the Alexander von Humboldt’s Senior Scientist Prize in 2001 and was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences that same year. In 2008 he was an elected fellow for the Animal Behavior Society and in 2013 he gave the keynote address at the 33rd International Apimondia Congress in Kiev.

Publications

Seeley wrote the following books: Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life, published by Princeton University Press, The Wisdom of the Hive: The Social Physiology of Honeybee Colonies, published by Harvard University Press, the Honeybee Democracy, published by the Princeton University Press.