Those We Lost in 2016

The scientific community bid farewell to several luminaries this year.

Written byBob Grant

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Bob Paine

Bob Paine, the University of Washington marine ecologist who first proposed the concept of “keystone species,” passed away in June from acute myeloid leukemia. He was 83. Paine formulated the ecological framework for keystone species, those that disproportionately affect the fates of many other species in a particular ecosystem they share, in the early 1960s while working in intertidal zones off the Pacific Northwest coast. The ochre sea star (Pisaster ochraceus) was one of the first species he formally recognized as being a keystone species. “His legacy is immense,” Bruce Menge, an integrative biologist at Oregon State University and one of Paine’s first graduate students, told the Associated Press. “He’s had an incredible effect on the entire field of ecology, not just marine ecology.”

WIKIMEDIA, DOUGLAS A. LOCKARDAhmed Zewail (1946-2016)

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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