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David Suzuki |
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David Suzuki is an acclaimed geneticist, environmentalist, the host of public television's The Nature of Things, the founder and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, and the author of more than forty books, including The Sacred Balance, Tree, Good News for a Change, and the new David Suzuki: The Autobiography. With characteristic candor and passion, he will describe his metamorphosis into a leading environmentalist; his many travels throughout the world and his meetings with international leaders, from Kaiapo chief Paiakan to Nelson Mandela to the Dalai Lama; and the abiding role of nature and family in his life.
David T. Suzuki, PhD, is an internationally renowned scientist, environmentalist, and broadcaster who has spent over 40 years educating people about science and environmental issues in the classroom and over the airwaves. He has received consistently high acclaim for his ability to explain the complexities of science in a compelling and easy-to-understand way and his face is familiar to millions around the world from the popular science TV show The Nature of Things, which he has hosted since 1979.
A third-generation Japanese-Canadian, David was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1936. During World War II, six-year-old David and his family were sent to an internment camp in the Slocan Valley in the B.C. Interior—a wartime measure prescribed by the federal government. After the war, the Suzuki family moved east to Ontario: first to Islington, then to Leamington, and finally to London, where David attended high school. He continued his education by winning a scholarship to Amherst College in Massachusetts, graduating with an Honours B.A. in Biology in 1958; which he followed with a PhD in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961. A respected geneticist and a gifted lecturer, David was a professor in the University of British Columbia’s zoology department for 30 years (1963-93) and then, for the eight years leading up to his retirement in 2001, a professor at the university’s Sustainable Development Research Institute (where he is now a professor emeritus).
After dabbling in the medium since 1962, David Suzuki’s television broadcasting career began formally in 1969 when he appeared on screens across Canada as the host of Suzuki on Science, which played for only two seasons but led to his hosting another Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) series called Science Magazine for five years, from 1974-79. David took to the radio in 1975 when he was hired to host Quirks and Quarks, a new weekly CBC science show that he hosted for four years (and which still airs today). In 1979, he left both Science Magazine and Quirks and Quarks to become host of yet another CBC television program: The Nature of Things. Seen today in over 50 countries around the world, this popular television series has helped make David Suzuki a household name. In addition to hosting the weekly series, David has produced numerous other television series and specials, including A Planet for the Taking (1985), which won an award from the United Nations, and The Sacred Balance (2002), which was later turned into a book. His PBS series on DNA, The Secret of Life (1993), was praised internationally, as was his five-part series for the Discovery Channel, The Brain: The Universe Within (1994). For CBC Radio, David created two influential documentary series on the environment: It’s a Matter of Survival (1984) and From Naked Ape to Superspecies (1999). In addition being a broadcaster, David Suzuki is the author of more than 40 books for adults and children, the most recent being the second volume of his life story, David Suzuki: The Autobiography, published by Greystone Books this April.
Over the years, David has received numerous Canadian and international awards for his work, of which the most notable are: a UNESCO prize for science, a United Nations Environment Programme medal, the Companion of the Order of Canada, and 18 honorary university degrees. In addition, David has received many tributes from Canada’s First Nations people, along with five names (Big Mountain; Man Who Knows Much; My Own; Sacred Mountain; Mountain Man; Eagle Child) and “adoption” by both Haida and Heiltsuk families. In 2004, CBC TV viewers nominated him as one of ten “Greatest Canadians” of all time and he finished fifth in the final vote.
David Suzuki is recognized as a world leader in sustainable ecology, and is someone who devotes himself wholeheartedly to educating the public about the importance of the natural world and the need to protect it. In 1990, David and his wife, Dr. Tara Cullis, co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to find ways for people to live sustainably in balance with the natural world and which uses science and education to promote solutions that help conserve nature; David currently serves as chair of the Foundation.
David Suzuki lives with his wife and their two children in Vancouver, British Columbia. In his little free time, David says he enjoys fishing, camping, and exploring the world of insects and tidal pools.
Videography and Production provided by Lotus Crown Films.
www.lotuscrownfilms.com
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