Holmes Rolston, III, is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University. Unanimously regarded as a founder of the field of environmental ethics, his work and efforts on behalf of the environment have been honored in many ways. Most recently, he was the 2003 Templeton Prize Laureate. The world’s most prestigious prize in religion, the Templeton Prize recognized Rolston’s work on the intrinsic value of nature and on the relationship between science and religion.

Rolston has published literally hundreds of scholarly and other essays, along with several major books. His collection of essays, Philosophy Gone Wild includes philosophical and natural history essays, as well as spiritual reflections on nature. In 1986, he presented his full-blown theory of natural intrinsic value in his Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World. In working out that theory, Rolston argues that natural value includes but goes beyond the value of individual organisms; he posited a new concept, systemic value, to account for the value he and others claim for ecosystems. His other books include Conserving Natural Value and the earlier Science and Nature. Genes, Genesis, and God contains his 1997-98 Gifford Lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh.

Rolston’s writing reflects his serious, lifelong love of and interest in nature. He infuses his prose with detailed examples from nature to illustrate and develop his ideas. Following his graduation from Davison College with a degree in physics and mathematics, he earned his divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, followed by a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Edinburgh. After that, he earned a masters degree in philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh and began teaching at Colorado State.

As evidence of his recognition as a key figure in his field, Rolston has been an invited lecturer throughout the world, including all the continents, Japan, and England. He was an official observer at the 1992 United Nations’ Rio Summit on the Environment and addressed the World Congress of Philosophy in Boston in 1998.

He was the distinguished lecturer at the Kyoto Japan Zen Symposium Seminar for Religious Philosophy in 1989. He was invited to speak on ethical issues in wildlife in South Africa in 1990, on environmental ethics and policy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing in 1991, and addressed the 28th Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota in 1992. In 1993, he traveled to Cardiff, Wales, to deliver the main conference address at the Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Conference. In 1996, he delivered lectures at 11 universities in Australia. In 1998, the All-India Association for Bioethics sponsored his lectures on genetics and ethics at ten universities across the subcontinent. Later that year, he traveled to China to speak at the first All China Conference on Environment and Development and at four Chinese universities. In 2000, Rolston returned to Brazil to address the Second Brazilian Congress on Conservation on the intrinsic values of nature.

Whenever he can, he includes nature or wilderness trips in his travels, forever deepening his knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world. At 70, he continues to hike and camp, exploring the back-country in Colorado and across the world.

Selected Books and Publications

• Conserving Natural Value, Columbia University Press, 1994
• Environmental Ethics: Duties to and Values in the Natural World, Temple University Press, 1989
• Genes, Genesis, and God: Values and Their Origins in Natural and Human History, Cambridge University Press, 1999
• Philosophy Gone Wild, Prometheus Press, 1986