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| 1984 | Robert McCreadie May | May | Link | The search for patterns in the balance of nature: advances and retreats. Ecology 67:1115-1126. Link |
| 1986 | Thomas William Schoener | Schoener | Link | Food webs from the small to the large. Ecology 70:1559-1589. Link |
| 1988 |
Simon Asher Levin |
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| 1990 | William M. Murdoch | Murdoch | Link | Population regulation in theory and practice. Ecology 75:271-287. Link |
| 1992 | Peter Morrison Vitousek | Vitousek | Link | Beyond global warming: ecology and global change. Ecology 75:1861-1876. Link |
| 1994 | Henry Miles Wilbur | Wilbur | Link | Experimental ecology of food webs: complex systems in temporary ponds. Ecology 78:2279-2302. Link |
| 1996 | David Tilman | Tilman | Link | The ecological consequences of changes in biodiversity: A search for general principles. Ecology 80:1455-1474. Link |
| 1998 | Robert V. O’Neill | O’Neill | Link | Is it time to bury the ecosystem concept? (With full military honors, of course!). Ecology 82:3275-3284. Link |
| 2000 | Stephen Russell Carpenter | Carpenter | Link | Ecological futures: building an ecology of the long now. Ecology 83:2069-2083. Link |
| 2002 | James Hemphill Brown | Brown | Link | Toward a metabolic theory of ecology. Ecology 85:1771-1789. Link |
| 2004 | May Roberta Berenbaum | Berenbaum | Link | |
| 2006 | Alan Hastings | Hastings | Link | Timescales, dynamics, and ecological understanding. Ecology 91:3471–3480. Link |
| 2008 | Monica Turner | Turner | Link | Disturbance and landscape dynamics in a changing world. Ecology 91:2833–2849. Link |
| 2010 | Stephen W. Pacala | Pacala | Link | How to build a young field in a crisis: Lessons from studies that added greatly to the basic intellectual foundation of ecology while solving an important applied problem |
| 2012 | Anthony R. Ives | Ives | Link | Theoretical inference from models and data |
| 2014 | Mercedes Pascual | Pascual | Link | |
| 2016 | Anurag A. Agrawal | Agrawal | Link |