Brian Fritz wins 2005 Haldane Award

On July 23, 2005, at the annual awards banquet at the WTA’s Transvision conference in Caracas Venezuela, the WTA Board of Directors announced that Brian Fritz had won the 2005 JBS Haldane Award for Best Undergraduate Paper. The winnng paper was “Genes, Memes, and Gender: Transhumanist Anthropology and Cultural Evolution”. 

Brian Fritz’s Acceptance Statement

I am deeply honored by the World Transhumanist Association to be chosen to receive the JBS Haldane Award. My first encounter with Transhumanism occurred in the years preceding the formation of the WTA. By chanced I wondered upon Anders Sandberg_s Transhumanist web pages and found my way onto the Extropian discussion group. The depth of knowledge and foresight expressed by some of the members of the Extropian group left a lasting impression. This was no small matter for a farm boy who grew up in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania where academic role models are far and few.

As generations before me, I chose to stay on the family farm rather than seek out a college education. Adverse events eventually brought the family farm to closure. Our misfortunes were modestly reversed through the establishment of a small coal mining company. While serving as president of our mining company, I found opportunities to rekindle my childhood passions for archaeology and geology. Active participation as a volunteer in archaeological associations lead to my appointment as a Field Associate to the Section of Man at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and a position as member of the Board of Directors for the Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology.

The experience of managing a small business inspired the needed confidence for my return to school. In 2003, I earned an Associate degree in General Studies, graduating as valedictorian at Allegany College of Maryland. Presently, I am pursuing a BA in Anthropology and a BS in Geology at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. My research focus combines archaeology and geology through the study of how mineral resources have been extracted and used through prehistoric times to the present. I am presently 39 years old and have a wonderful wife who is also a professional archaeologist.