'Matriarch of demography' wins lifetime award

Jane Menken, distinguished professor of sociology and director of the Institute of Behavioral Science, was honored as the 2009 Laureate of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population during a recent quadrennial meeting in Marrakech, Morocco.

The IUSSP Laureate Award was established in 1991 to recognize the lifetime achievements of outstanding IUSSP members. The award is based on contributions to the advancement of population sciences and distinguished service rendered to the organization. To be eligible for consideration, an individual must have been a member of the IUSSP for at least 20 years and be nominated by five or more IUSSP members from different countries.

During the award ceremony on Sept 30, 2009, Menken was honored by John Cleland, professor of medical demography at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and current IUSSP President, as well as former students and colleagues.

Cleland described Menken as “the great matriarch of demography” and the ultimate facilitator of the discipline. He reviewed her distinguished contributions to the field particularly in developing mathematical models of the reproductive process that initiated a new area of research in reproductive and child health, combined with her contributions to research involving the Matlab Demographic Surveillance System in Bangladesh. Menken’s efforts in research capacity development through the African Population Studies Training Program at CU-Boulder were also lauded.

Former student Alex Ezeh, now executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya, reminisced about Menken’s influence as a teacher, coach and mentor. Other colleagues, including Professor José Alberto Magno de Carvalho of Brazil and Professor and Senator of the Italian Parliament Massimo Livi Bacci, described her organizational impacts on the IUSSP and the Population Association of America, as she has worked to make the associations more accessible and inclusive.

Hania Zlotnick, another former student and current director of the U.N. Population Division, recalled her first impression of Menken, whom she met soon after Menken had finished her Ph.D. at Princeton. Menken had written a book with Mindel Sheps titled "Mathematical Models of Conception and Birth," and Zlotnick had a sense it would be highly influential in the field of fertility studies.

Zlotnick noted that the book, like the author, possessed a “light and cheery cover but with heavy content.” She described Menken as an influential scholar “in human form” with both “general intelligence and high emotional intelligence.”

Prior to joining the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1997, Menken was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

For more information see the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population's site.