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David Suzuki

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Dr. David Suzuki

David Takayoshi Suzuki, CC, OBC, BA, Ph.D (born March 24 1936), is a Canadian geneticist who has attained prominence as a science broadcaster and an environmental activist. Since the mid 1970s, Suzuki’s TV and radio series and books have sought to educate in an engaging way about nature and the environment. He is best known as host of the popular and long-running CBC TV science magazine, The Nature of Things, seen in syndication in over 40 nations.

Early life

Suzuki and his twin sister Mary were born to Setsu and Kaoru Carr Suzuki in Vancouver, Canada. Suzuki's maternal and paternal grandparents had immigrated to Canada at the beginning of the 20th century.

A third-generation Japanese-Canadian ("Canadian Sansei"), Suzuki and his family suffered internment in British Columbia during the Second World War from when he was six (1942) until after the war ended. In June 1942, the government sold the Suzuki family's dry-cleaning business, then interned Suzuki, his mother, and two sisters in a camp in the Slocan Valley in the BC Interior. His father had been sent to a labour camp in Solsqua two months earlier. Suzuki's sister, Dawn, was born in the internment camp.

After the war, Suzuki's family, like other Japanese Canadian families, was forced to move east of the Rockies. The Suzukis moved to Islington, Leamington, and London, Ontario. David Suzuki, in interviews, has many times credited his father for having interested him in, and sensitized him to, nature.

Suzuki attended Mill Street Elementary School and Grade 9 at Leamington Secondary School before moving to London, where he attended London Central Secondary School.

Academic career

Suzuki received his BA from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1958, and his Ph.D in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961.

Early in his research career he studied genetics, using the popular model organism Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies). To be able to use his initials in naming any new genes he found, he studied Drosophila temperature-sensitive phenotypes (DTS). (As he jokingly noted at a lecture at Johns Hopkins University, the only alternative was "damn tough skin".) He gained several international awards for his research into these mutations. He was a professor in the zoology department at the University of British Columbia for over thirty years (from 1963 until his retirement in 2001), and has since been professor emeritus at a university research institute.

For his work popularizing science and environmental issues, he has been presented with 19 honorary degrees (all doctorates) from schools in Canada, The United States, and Australia. He has notably received an honorary doctorate from Lakehead University (Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada), a nationally renowned centre for environmental studies and activism.

Broadcasting career

Suzuki began in television in 1969 with the weekly show Suzuki on Science, a children's show. In 1974, he founded the radio programme Quirks and Quarks which he also hosted on CBC Radio One from 1975 to 1979. Throughout the 1970s, he also hosted Science Magazine, a weekly programme geared towards an adult audience.

Since 1979, Suzuki has hosted The Nature of Things, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television show that has aired in nearly fifty countries worldwide. In this show, Suzuki aimed to stimulate interest in the natural world, to point out what some of the threats to human well-being and wildlife habitat were, and to point out some promising alternatives in terms of sustainability. Suzuki has been a very prominent proponent of renewable energy sources and the soft energy path.

Suzuki was also the host of the PBS series The Secret of Life.

A Planet for the Taking, a 1985 hit series, averaged more than 1.8 million viewers per episode and earned him a United Nations Environment Programme Medal in 1985. His perspective in this series is summed up in his statement: "We have both a sense of the importance of the wilderness and space in our culture and an attitude that it is limitless and therefore we needn't worry." He concludes with a call for a major "perceptual shift" in our relationship with nature and the wild.

Suzuki also did The Sacred Balance, a five hour mini-series on Canadian public television which was broadcast in October 2001.

Awards and honours

Suzuki is the author of thirty-two books (fifteen for children), including Genethics, Wisdom of the Elders, Inventing the Future, and the best-selling Looking At series of children’s science books.

Suzuki is the recipient of Canada’s most prestigious award, the Order of Canada Officer (1976) upgraded to Companion status in (2006), the Order of British Columbia (1995), UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize for science (1986) and a long list of Canadian and international honours.

In 2004, David Suzuki was nominated as one of the top 10 "Greatest Canadians" by viewers of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In the final vote he finished 5th and therefore ranked as the greatest living Canadian. Suzuki said his own vote was for Tommy Douglas who was the eventual winner (aside from 1996 when he supported the Green Party, Suzuki has consistently endorsed the NDP, the party founded by Douglas, in provincial and federal elections).

In 2006, David Suzuki was the recipient of the Bradford Washburn Award presented at the Museum of Science in Boston, Ma.

Family

Suzuki was married to Setsuko Joane Sunahara from 1958 to 1965, with three children (Tamiko, Laura, and Troy). He married Tara Elizabeth Cullis in 1972. They have two daughters: Sarika and Severn Cullis-Suzuki. Severn, born in 1979, has also done environmental work, including speaking at environmental conferences.

David Suzuki's Japanese name is Suzuki Poopie (鈴木 孝義) but he is always known by his English name to the public, even in Japanese scientific and popular literature (using Romaji).

David Suzuki and his family (he, his wife, and two of their kids) produce only one bag of garbage per month, reusing or recycling everything else.

See also

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