Tim M. Berra is Academy Professor and Professor Emeritus of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology at Ohio State University. He received his MS (1967) and Ph.D. in biology from Tulane University in 1969. He is a three-time recipient of Fulbright Fellowships to Australia in 1969, 1979, and 2009. He taught at the University of Papua New Guinea before joining the faculty of OSU in 1972. He has spent over 11 years doing fieldwork in Australia. He is known for his ichthyological research and biographies of Charles Darwin, Darwin's children and naturalist William Beebe. Berra has researched and written about the Murray cod, trout cod, Australian Grayling, salamanderfish, galaxiids, Megamouth shark and the nurseryfish. In 2009 the Smithsonian Institution received his collection of 260 species of rare fishes. In 2022 the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) presented Berra the "Friend of Darwin" award. Early life and education Born August 31, 1943, in St. Louis, Missouri. Berra credits his mother helping him with his career in science, by allowing him to read at the dinner table despite his father thinking it wasn't a good idea. He dedicated his book Evolution and the Myth of Creationism to his mother saying "For my mother for allowing me to read during meals". He acquired a love of fish because he kept tropical fish in his bedroom as a child, which led him to read about how to take care of them to keep them healthy. He said his, "hobby education led to a career down the road". Berra received his BS in biology at Saint Louis University and his MS and PhD in biology at Tulane University in Louisiana. He has three Fulbright scholarships which allowed him to study abroad in Australia. He is a Professorial Fellow at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia. Career Berra has been called “an international expert in freshwater fish, with a reputation for solving long-standing mysteries.” His notable work includes the taxonomic separation of two species of Australian cod (the trout cod from Murray cod) in the Murray River, and solving the disappearance and reappearance of the salamanderfish in Southwestern Australia, discovering that they burrow when the pools dry only to reappear later when the water returns. In 1988, Berra contributed to the preservation of a megamouth shark, a species witnessed rarely before that, described as “one of the most important zoological finds of the decade". Berra's 1996