Introduction to the Papers of the 2001 Kowalevsky Medal Winner Symposium

In 2001, the centennial of Alexander Kowalevsky’s death, the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists re-established the Kowalevsky Medal honoring ‘‘extraordinary achievements in comparative zoology and embryology of the scientists who have contributed greatly to the modern understanding of evolutionary relations between major groups of the animal kingdom, the evolutionary biology of development, and modern approaches in comparative zoology.’’ The Medal together with a small monetary reward was originally established in 1910, yet the political turmoil of the 1910sFWorld War I, the Russian Revolution followed by Civil WarFinterrupted the process of establishing and awarding the Medal and Prize. During Czarist Russia the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists was a well respected Learned Society with many international ties and the nomination process for the Kowalevsky Medal was always intended to involve the whole international scientific community. But the Kowalevsky Medal was not a priority for the Society during the difficult times following the Civil War and the Prize and Medal faded into (temporary) oblivion. Not all was lost, however, as the original cast for the Medal was preserved in Leningrad’s (St. Petersburg’s) Hermitage Museum. It has recently been discovered and the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists decided to reinstate the Prize and medal on the occasion of the Kowalevsky centennial (see Mikhailov and Gibert, 2002 for more information on Kowalevsky and the Medal). At the December 2001 meeting of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists the first winners of the Kowalevsky Medal were announced. As was originally intended, the winners were selected based on recommendations of an international group of nominators. The winning group of eight biologists from seven different countries represents a wide spectrum of biological sub-disciplines as well as local traditions. The winners are: D. Anderson (Australia), G. Freeman (USA), B. Hall (Canada), O. Ivanova-Kazas (Russia), C. Nielsen (Denmark), R. Raff (USA), R. Riedl (Austria), and K. Sander (Germany). In subsequent years one Kowalevsky Medal will be awarded annually. Following the announcement of the first cohort of Kowalevsky Prize winners the Division of Evolutionary Developmental Biology of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology sponsored a symposium at its January 2003 meeting in Toronto. At this meeting several of the Kowalvesky Medal winners responded to this honor. The papers collected in this issue of Molecular and Developmental Evolution are revised and expanded versions of the symposium presentations. Together these papers provide a unique opportunity to trace the multiple roots of the modern re-synthesis of evolutionary and developmental biology that during the 19th century was associated with names such as Ernst Haeckel, Francis Balfour, and Alexander Kowalvesky. The reinstatement of the Kowalvesky Medal was timely. By all accounts ‘‘evo-devo’’ has arrived. It is now solidly entrenched in the conceptual framework of modern biology and has all the markings of a new discipline, such as representation in professional societies, scientific journals devoted to the field, academic programs and job searches, panels at funding agencies, textbooks, etc.. However, current-day evolutionary developmental biology is not as uniform as the image of a new scientific discipline and the powerful icons of ‘‘the genetic toolkit for development’’ and the almost magical qualities of ‘‘Hox genes’’ seem to suggest. As a matter of fact there are many different questions currently pursued under the umbrella of