2000
Morrison Award
Sponsored by
F. W. Morrison Fund
A.E. Freeman was born in Lewisburg, WV on a 30-cow Jersey
dairy farm. He received his B.S. degree in Dairy Husbandry in 1952 and his M.
S. degree in Animal Breeding in 1954 from West Virginia University and his Ph.
D. degree from Cornell University in 1957. Dr. Freeman joined the faculty at
Iowa State University in 1957 and has remained there for his entire
professional career. He has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses from
1957 to the present. His research has been in animal breeding, with primary
responsibility for dairy breeding. Dr. Freeman, with his students and
colleagues, has published 210 refereed papers, 182 abstracts, 237 research
mimeographs, and 179 popular articles. Dr. Freeman is a Professor of Animal
Science and was named Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture
in 1978.
Freeman has worked extensively with industry groups,
especially the artificial breeding industry, where most of the knowledge he and
his students have discovered has been applied. He has given advice to all of
the AI organizations in the United States for improving their breeding
programs. He has also had an impact on breeding programs in AI organizations in
Europe. This is particularly true in The Netherlands, where the three top
executives in Holland Genetics studied with Freeman.
The research of Dr. Freeman and his students has generated
knowledge that has been accepted and applied on an industry-wide basis.
Examples are the development of dairy sire evaluation for calving ease. These
evaluations are now computed on all Holstein sires in the United States and are
published worldwide. Freeman was a pioneer in predicting the expected life of
sires' daughters in producers' herds from the linear type scores of a sample of
daughters. This was enhanced by adding actual life data and is published by
UDSA for all cattle in the United States. He also assisted in developing linear
type scores that are universally used and has developed, with colleagues, a
method of predicting health of daughters of AI sires that looks very promising
from the immunocompetency of the sires. Dr. Freeman was elected President of
the most recent World Congress for Genetics Applied to Livestock Production.
He is married to Christine Lewis, and they have three
daughters and five grandchildren.