Paul Heltne, Ph.D.

Director

Curriculum Vitae (pdf) | Contact

Paul was born on July 4, 1941, in Lake Mills, Iowa, and grew up on a nearby farm. After completing the primary grades in a one-room country school, he attended Lake Mills Community High School and graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1959. He enrolled in Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and graduated in 1962, summa cum laude, with a major in classical languages and a minor in chemistry.

Paul then studied at the University of Chicago School of Medicine. After his first and second years he traveled to South Africa and Namibia to do physical anthropological and paleontological research with Dr. Ronald Singer of the University. Dr. Singer brought Paul into an MD-PhD program in which Paul specialized in primatology. While a graduate student he attended the Fundamentals of Tropical Biology Course in Costa Rica and Panama and did field research on primates in the Canal Zone and Peru. He also made two field trips into the Caribbean with Richard Levins and Monte Lloyd to study the island biogeography of ants. After graduating in 1970 with a Ph. D., Paul accepted a position in the Department of Anatomy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He continued to teach anatomy for medical students and pursued research into the behavior and reproduction of Callimico goeldii, a rare and unusual South American primate. He participated in field research on the distribution and spacing behavior of the howler monkeys on Barro Colorado Island in 1982. He worked on the master plan for the Baltimore Zoo and Druid Hill Park, and subsequently led a National Academy of Sciences survey of primates in northern Bolivia and southern Peru, as well as a survey of night monkeys in northern Columbia. His laboratory research grew to include the reproductive behavior of night monkeys in captivity and exploratory research into the biology of the pygmy marmoset. He co-organized an international symposium on the endangered Lion-tailed Macaque at the Baltimore Zoo.

In 1982, Paul accepted the position of Director, later President, of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. There he led two nationally recognized initiatives in outreach education to inner city and rural schools, co-organized two major international symposia on chimpanzee behavior, and directed a major symposium on the similarity of creativity in the arts and sciences. He led learning trips to Peru and Ecuador, the Galapagos, and Antarctica while President, and was active in national and regional museum organizations. Paul co-founded the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy with Dr. Jon Miller and the Nature, Polis, and Ethics Project with Ron Engel, Strachan Donnelley, and Gerald Adelmann. In 1999, Paul opened the Academy's new Nature Museum, a thirty-two million dollar venture. To celebrate the opening of the museum, he co-organized a major international symposium entitled "Animal Social Complexity and Intelligence" which has recently appeared as a book edited by Frans de Waal and Peter Tyack.

Now President Emeritus of the Academy, Paul continues his work as a Director in the Chicago office.

Contact

Paul Heltne, Ph.D.
Director
Center for Humans and Nature
4001 North Ravenswood Ave, # 401
Chicago, IL 60613
773-404-8270
773-404-8275 (fax)
paulheltne@humansandnature.org