Nils Chr. Stenseth is an evolutionary biologist having work on a broad spectrum of ecological systems (terrestrial, marine and freshwater). He is a professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Oslo. Much of his work has been on the ecological and evolutionary effects of climate variation and other human-caused variation. For the last 20 years or so, he has worked on plague and other zoonotic diseases. He founded the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) at the University of Oslo. He has severed as president of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters as well as the president of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS). He is member of several academies, including the National Academy of Sciences in US and the French Academy of Sciences. For more information, see www.mn.uio.no/cees/stenseth.