Katherine Ralls Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Katherine S. Ralls is an American zoologist and conservationist who is Senior Research Zoologist Emerita at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, National Zoological Park. Ralls’ research interests are in the behavioral ecology, genetics, and conservation of mammals, both terrestrial and marine. Since 1980, she has focused on conservation biology, especially the genetic problems of small captive and wild populations.

Ralls worked on the founding of the Society for Conservation Biology in the mid-1980s. In 1986, she and research associate Jonathan Ballou, (now research scientist emeritus at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute), developed an international workshop on genetic management for zoo animals. In 2017, Ralls, Ballou, and Richard Frankham published the first book on the genetic management of fragmented species populations, “Genetic Management of Fragmented Animal and Plant Populations.”

She obtained a BA in Biology from Stanford in 1960, an MS in Biology from Radcliffe College in 1962 and a PhD in Biology from Harvard in 1965. In 2005 she was granted an honorary fellowship in the Zoological Society of London.