Outstanding Achievement Award

Established: 1978
Design: Personalized certificate with the SWG seal.

This honor is awarded to a member who has made an outstanding contribution or service of lasting benefit to science, the arts, or humanity.

Outstanding Achievement Award Recipients

2022

Anne Firth Murray

For dedicating her career to taking actions to benefit the rights of women around the world.

2017

Carol Horvitz

For long-time contribution to mathematical ecology.

2011

Mary Crowley

For identifying and bringing to the public’s attention the floating island of plastic in the North Pacific Gyre.

Helen Kennedy

For specializing in the fast-disappearing plant family Marantaceae (prayer plants) and introducing them for cultivation.

Elizabeth White

For spearheading the heroic rescue of a fellow climber on Makalu II and for fostering the understanding of the Islamic world aid to women in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

2008

Janice Monk

For her work as a feminist geographer and mentor to many students and geographers throughout her nearly forty years in academia, research on gender and ethnic themes in Australia, the Caribbean and at the U.S. & Mexico border, and for her cross-cultural projects looking at women and their relationship with the land. She has conducted research also on international developments in feminist geography, on the history of women in professional geography, and in geographic education.

Elizabeth C. Titus Putnam

For her work as a conservation educator, and for founding of the Student Conservation Program and the Student Conservation Association, which annually places about 3,000 participants to help in national parks and other public and private lands to preserve and protect our nation's natural resources.

Martha H. Talbot

For her work as an international ecologist and conservationist, and for pioneering field ecological research in a number of countries on four continents. Marty has worked in the field in Asia and Africa since 1959 and has numerous publications on wildlife, ecology, research techniques and conservation. She and her husband have worked as advisors to African & Asian governments on conservation, parks and protected areas. She is a co-founder of the Student Conservation Association.

2005

Mary Upjohn Meader

For her pioneering aerial photography in the 1930s.

Alison Spence Brooks

For pursuing the theory that human development occurred in Africa much earlier than once believed. She bolstered this theory by developing new dating techniques for materials too old for radiocarbon methods, using fossilized ostrich eggs.

2002

Louise Emmons

For 30 years of work on the ecology of tropical and neotropical rainforests and for her highly praised and respected field guide to the mammalian fauna of neotropical rainforests.

Carol A. Meyer

For 20 years of work as an archaeologist specializing in sites in the Middle East, particularly Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, most especially the settlement site of Bir Umm Fawakhir in Eastern Desert of Egypt.

Edith M. "Jackie" Ronne

For a lifetime of living on, studying about, lecturing on, and writing about the continent of Antarctic, as the first American woman to set foot and over-winter there. Ronne Ice Shelf, the world's 2nd largest, is named for her.

1999

Patricia Ann Woolley

For significant discoveries made as world's foremost authority on marsupial mice of Australia and New Guinea.

1996

Cecilia Doak

For pioneering work and making a major contribution to science and humankind by teaching health workers to talk to patients with low literacy skills so that they understand medical information.

Beth McKnight

For founding an organization dedicated to fostering conservation throughout the world, sponsoring expeditions to retrace earlier explorations in an historical context, and documenting the precariousness of wilderness and nature.

Katharine Fowler Billings

For contributions to geological science, especially in Sierra Leone and as a pioneer in conservation and environmental protection.

Marie Tharp

For expertise in cartography and oceanography and discovering the Rift Valley of the Mid Atlantic Ridge through analysis of depth soundings.

1993

Patricia Anawalt

For pioneering a method for reconstructing the past through evidence that exists in both pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican and present-day Central Mexican cloth and clothing, and contributing to the study of costume evolution.

Elisabeth Booz

For work in southwestern China as the first Western professor at Yunnan University, writing four textbooks as she taught English; and for travels in, and writing the first guidebook about, Tibet.

Helen Cruickshank

For a career as a writer, wildlife photographer, conservationist, lecturer, and leader of ecology/wildlife workshops and photographic safaris.

Ruth Robertson

For her career of many "firsts" in photojournalism, including first woman to photograph football games from the 50 yard line at Northwestern and Notre Dame, the only woman photographer in the press pool at the both 1944 Democratic and Republican national conventions, leading the first expedition into Venezuela to photograph Angel Falls, and the only woman correspondent in Alaska during WWII.

1990

Jeanne M. Gurnee

For expertise in speleology and exploration and conservation of caves, with special work in Puerto Rico and Barbados.

Clara Egli LeGear

For founding the Geography and Map Division of the Special Libraries Association, her expertise in historical cartography, and indexing an eight volume "List of Geographical Atlases" for the Library of Congress.

Helen Margaret Wallis

For expertise on history as shown through maps, atlases, and globes, and as Head Map Librarian with the British Map Library, fostering cooperative exchanges, exhibits, and geographic societies.

Laura Nader

For expertise in law in preliterate societies, especially the Zapotec Indians of Oaxaco, Mexico, and contributions to the understanding of the anthropological aspects of legal and social change.

1987

Nancy Hatch Dupree

For writing and lectures on research and travel in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mary LeCron Foster

For field work and publications on the linguistic and social anthropology of certain peoples of Mexico.

Jeannette Mirsky

For writings on historical geography and history of Arctic exploration, and history of exploration of Central Asia and China.

Margaret E. Murie

For pioneering work in the environmental movement.

Marvin Breckinridge Patterson

For her insightful writings; photographs of Africa, the Caribbean, and Appalachia; broadcasts; and contributions to many causes, especially historic preservation, as well as her service as chair of the Frontier Nursing Service.

1984

Jocelyn Crane Griffin

For contributions to zoology, ichthyology, and ecology, and for deepwater descent in bathysphere.

Mary Slusser

For anthropological research in Vietnam and Laos, and directing a film on tribes of Laos, in primitive areas, as well as archaeological research of lost cities and neglected ancient shrines, sculptures, and art objects in Nepal.

1981

Gloria Hollister Anable

For expeditions to British Guiana jungle, and deep-water records set in bathysphere in Bermuda.

Elizabeth Colson

For anthropology achievements, as recognized authority on American Indian society and on the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa.

Frances Kelsey

For scientific investigation of the drug thalidomide that prevented its distribution in the U.S., avoiding major birth deformities.

Evelyn Pruitt

For pioneering the field of remote sensing, used to interpret the earth's surface and sub-surface, and developing the field of coastal geography with attention on environments of world coasts.

1978

Elisabeth Shirley Enochs

For raising the standards of child and maternal health and nutrition throughout the world, improving institutions housing orphans and abandoned children in Latin America.