
USDA Chemist Elected to National Academy of SciencesBy Tara Weaver May 5, 1997U.S.
Department of Agriculture scientist James H. Tumlinson has been elected to
membership in the National Academy of
Sciences. Election to NAS is considered one of the highest honors that a
scientist or engineer can receive. A research chemist with USDAs Agricultural Research Service in
Gainesville, Fla., Tumlinson is one of 60 new members and 15 foreign associates
from 11 countries elected to the Academy for distinguished and continuing
achievements in research. The newly elected members were announced at the 134th annual meeting of the
Academy in April. Their election brings the total number of current active NAS
members to 1,773. Tumlinson is research leader of the Insect Chemistry Research Unit at the agencys Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology. His scientific accomplishments include discovery of a natural substance that attracts boll weevils, a major pest of cotton. The substance, called a pheromone, is now used in traps to detect and catch boll weevils. Tumlinson isolated, identified and artificially reproduced each of the four
chemical blends that together make up the pheromone. This environmentally
friendly chemical attractant played a key role in a boll weevil eradication
program in the southeastern United States. Tumlinson also has identified chemical attractants for Japanese beetles,
corn earworm and fall armyworm moths, corn rootworms, peachtree and lesser
peachtree borers and other insects. He has written more than 200 scientific
papers in his 30-year career in insect chemistry research. Tumlinson recently received a USDA award for personal and professional
excellence. In 1996, he was elected a Fellow of the
Entomological Society of America.
Tumlinson is vice president-elect of the
International Society of Chemical
Ecology. Scientific contact: James H. Tumlinson, Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology, Gainesville, Fla., phone (352) 374-5730, fax (352) 374-5707, [email protected]. U.S. Department of Agriculture | |