Sonenshine Wins Prestigious Hoogstraal Medal

Daniel Sonenshine, professor emeritus and eminent scholar of biological sciences, was awarded one of the highest honors in his field of ticks and tick-borne diseases in December.

The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene presented him with the prestigious Hoogstraal Medal for outstanding lifelong service internationally in medical entomology.

Fifty years ago, Sonenshine was a graduate student of Harry Hoogstraal, who was widely considered to be the 20th century’s pre-eminent authority on ticks and tick-borne diseases and for whom the award is named.

Sonenshine, who joined the ODU faculty in 1961, also later rose to prominence in acarology – the study of ticks and mites.

Perhaps the crowning achievement of Sonenshine’s career is the two-volume text, “The Biology of Ticks,” that he wrote during the late 1980s. The first volume was published in 1991 and the second in 1993 by Oxford University Press. With a total of 914 pages, the work covers all aspects of the biology, morphology, systematics, physiology, biochemistry, ecology, disease relationships and control of ticks. The monumental work helped him win Virginia’s Outstanding Scientist Award in 1994.