Anders G.J. Rhodin is an orthopedic surgeon as well as a turtle researcher and conservationist. Born in Sweden, he immigrated to the USA in 1958, received a B.A. from Dartmouth in 1971, an M.D. from the University of Michigan in 1977, did orthopedic surgical residency training at Yale, and was in private medical practice in Massachusetts from 1982 to 2019. He is now retired and lives in Vermont with his wife, Carol Conroy. He has been doing research on turtles since 1972, initially at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, and currently has over 300 publications. He has described six new species of turtles, including three with Russ Mittermeier.
Anders is the Founder and Director of Chelonian Research Foundation, a philanthropic nonprofit organization established in 1992 for the production, publication, and support of worldwide turtle and tortoise research. He is Founding Editor and Publisher of Chelonian Conservation and Biology, a peer-reviewed scientific journal devoted exclusively to turtles and tortoises inaugurated in 1993, and Chelonian Research Monographs, a book-length series focused on turtle and tortoise research and conservation established in 1996. Since 2017, both of these publications are co-published with the Turtle Conservancy. Anders was Co-Chair or Chair of the IUCN Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group (TFTSG) from 2000 to 2012, and is currently Executive Vice Chair.
In 2012 he received the Sir Peter Scott Award for Conservation Merit from the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the Behler Turtle Conservation Award from the Turtle Survival Alliance and the TFTSG. He serves as Board Chair of Turtle Conservancy, is Founding Co-Chair of Turtle Conservation Fund, Turtle Taxonomy Fund, and Congdon-Dickson Turtle Ecology Fund, as well as a Founding Board Member of Turtle Survival Alliance and African Aquatic Conservation Fund.
