Michael Donoghue

Michael Donoghue joined Yale in 2000 as the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He served as chair of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department in 2001-02 and as the director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History from 2003 to 2008. From 2008 to 2010 he served as Yale’s inaugural vice president for West Campus planning and program development, and in 2011 he was named Sterling Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He served as director of Yale’s Marsh Botanical Garden from 2015 to 2018, and as director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies from 2019 to 2021. Until his retirement in 2022, he served as the curator of botany and the curator of paleobotany at the Peabody Museum of Natural History.  

Professor Donoghue earned his undergraduate degree from Michigan State University (1976) and his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University (1982). He served on the faculty of San Diego State University (1982-85), the University of Arizona (1985-92), and Harvard University (1992-00), where he was the director of the Harvard University Herbaria from 1995 to 1999. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1997), a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2005), and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2008). His research concerns the diversity and evolutionary history of plants, and connections between phylogeny, biogeography, and ecology. He has been active in movements to reconstruct the Tree of Life and to link evolution to biodiversity conservation. He has published over 300 scientific papers and two books and mentored over fifty postdoctoral associates and graduate students. 

Professor Donoghue and his wife Susan are now living in Tucson, Arizona, where Michael is also an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona.