Dinsdale Memorial Award 2008
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 1st, 2008
Tim Dinsdale (above), the adventurer and Loch Ness hunter, lives on in the Tim Dinsdale Memorial Award.
The Dinsdale Award was established in 1992 by The Society for Scientific Exploration’s founding member, councilor, and editor of the SSE Journal, (now retired) Professor Henry Bauer, so that the SSE could recognize “significant contributions to the expansion of human understanding through the study of unexplained phenomena.”
Such contributions were made by Tim Dinsdale, in whose memory this prize is named. Dinsdale was by profession an engineer, who chanced to obtain in 1960 what remains still the most striking evidence of unexplained animals in Loch Ness. Dinsdale’s subsequent investigations over three decades were carried on with such integrity that the Times of London marked his passing with a respectful obituary, rare indeed with someone whose prominence stems from the pursuit of such unorthodox research.
Through the Dinsdale award, the SSE endeavors to identify, publicize, and reward senior scholars who have made similarly substantial contributions to the understanding of anomalous physical, biological, and psychological events in the spirit of meticulous research, exemplary methodology, and proper scholarly attitude that Tim Dinsdale exemplified.
This year’s Dinsdale Award was given to Jerome Clark, “for his prolific publications and editorial work on anomalies, concentrating especially on the UFO phenomenon, which have brought to the general publication comprehensive and trustworthy information presented from a sophisticated perspective.”
As many of you know, I have known Jerry for decades and wrote two books with him in the 1970s. I coauthored Cryptozoology A to Z: The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters, Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature (NY: Simon and Schuster) with Jerry Clark in 1999. Read more about Jerry here.
Congratulations to Jerry for receiving this award!
Previous winners of the Dinsdale Award are:
1992 Helmut Schmidt, for pioneering electronic and computer techniques for the study of human-machine interactions;
1994 William Corliss, for unique and comprehensive cataloguing of scientific anomalies;
1996 Halton Arp, for work on non-Doppler red-shifts and their import for cosmological theory;
1998 Ian Stevenson, for distinguished studies of cases suggestive of reincarnation;
2000 Kilmer McCully, for elucidating the role of homocysteine in arteriosclerosis;
2002 William Roll, for studies of “recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis,” e.g. poltergeists;
2004 Robert Rines, founder of the Academy of Applied Science whose mission is “stimulating invention, innovation and other creative endeavors as well as the transfer and utilization of technology,” for major discoveries concerning the natural history of Loch Ness and major advances in seeking the large animals thought to await discovery there; and
2006 Peter Sturrock, for “significant contributions to the expansion of human understanding through the study of unexplained phenomena.”
Now Jerome Clark’s name will be added to the list for 2008. Who will win the award in 2010?
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Please note, curiously, the only cryptozoologically-inclined individual who has won the award to date, named after the very cryptozoologically-minded Tim Dinsdale, is Robert Rines.
Perhaps the International Cryptozoology Museum should begin to yearly bestow an award to a cryptozoologist or hominologist who contributes the most to cryptozoology/hominology for the previous year, named in honor of a benefactor who donates $10,000 or more, to the museum, or for Ivan T. Sanderson and Bernard Heuvelmans, the godfathers of cryptozoology? Humm, the annual Sanderson-Heuvelmans Cryptozoology Award?
What do you think?
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About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Well, I would be shocked, SHOCKED, if you don’t win that award in 2010, Loren!
Or maybe it would be better to wait until 2012. You know, it’s a cool number 😉
I’m happy there is an award which remembers Tim Dinsdale. Whether or not he filmed Nessie, Dinsdale was by all accounts a decent and honest bloke. All those years at Ness, he could have gone the way of Frank Searle and manufactured sightings and photos. But he didn’t. He had too much integrity to fake it.
Congrats to Clark. Well deserved, for his Herculean archival research!