[Coral-List] Lawrence B. Slobodkin (1928-2009)

[Phil Dustan]

      Professor Lawrence Slobodkin, Emeritus Professor of Ecology and 
Evolution passed away in his sleep at home on September 11. Dr. 
Slobodkin was the founding chairman of Stony Brook's Ecology and 
Evolution Program and Department. He was twice a Guggenheim Fellow, a 
Fulbright Fellow, a Smithsonian Fellow, Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson 
International Center for Scholars, a Foreign Member of the Linnean 
Society, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He 
was president of the American Society of Naturalists in 1985, the 
Society for General Systems Research in 1969 and of Stony Brook's 
Faculty Senate in 1985. In 2005 he received The Eminent Ecologist Award 
from the Ecological Society of America in recognition of "an outstanding 
body of ecological work or of sustained contributions of extraordinary 
merit".

      In ecological circles Larry, a student of G. E. Hutchinson, will 
be remembered for the concepts and hypotheses he challenged us with 
including the origin of red tides, the prudent predator, ten percent 
trophic efficiency, the earth is green, the time-stability hypothesis of 
species diversity, strategies of evolution, simplicity and complexity, 
and his work with hydra. Larry was an extraordinary man of science who 
shaped the field of evolutionary ecology through his research, teaching, 
and most of all his insightful questions.

His wife, Tamara, has requested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be 
made to the Slobodkin Fund of the Stony Brook Foundation for graduate 
student research.

          Phil

-- 
Phillip Dustan  Ph.D.
Department of Biology
College of Charleston
Charleston   SC  29424
(843) 953-8086 voice
(843) 953-5453 (Fax)