My father John Kanwisher, a scientist and inventor at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, died peacefully in his sleep at age 95 on May 7. He coinvented the first electronically controlled diving rebreather, measured the first electrocardiogram from a whale, and played a central role in transforming the study of animal physiology from the lab to the wild through the use of telemetry devices he invented.
Family and friends remember him as an eccentric and adventurous free spirit with an insatiable curiosity and infectious enthusiasm.
“We were all blown away by his brilliance, enthusiasm and general rebellious and iconoclastic attitude,” Michael Fedak, a mammal physiologist at the University of St. Andrews, wrote to me in an email.
John grew up in Oneida, New York, the son of an Irish-American mother and a German immigrant father who arrived penniless in the US at age 17. John spent his childhood hunting, trapping, ...
