The Arnold Arboretum of Jamaica Plain announces that Dr. William ("Ned") Friedman has been named as its next director. His appointment at the Arboretum will begin on January 1, 2011. He will also be a tenured professor of organismic and evolutionary biology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

Friedman received a bachelor's degree in biology from Oberlin College in 1981, and a doctorate in botany from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986. Friedman spent his early career in the Botany Department at the University of Georgia before joining the faculty in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at at the University of Colorado . 

Friedman  is committed strengthening the institution's partnership with the City of Boston, the local schools, museums, environmental organizations, and community groups. On Nov. 4, he will deliver a lecture at the Harvard Museum of Natural History on "Darwin's 'Abominable Mystery' and the Search for the First Flowering Plants." He plans to launch a Director's Lecture Series at the Arboretum to  make cutting edge research accessible to the public.