David Stoddart (geographer)

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David Ross Stoddart (born November 15, 1937 in Stockton-on-Tees , † November 23, 2014 in Berkeley , California ) was a British biogeographer who was considered an expert in the study of coral reefs .

life and career

Early years

Stoddart was the youngest of three children born to the married couple Beatrice and Herbert Stoddart. His parents had both served in World War I , his father as a biplane pilot and his mother as a nurse in France . During Stoddart's childhood, his father worked as an engineer for the construction company Ashmore, Benson, Pease & Co. and had to travel to Russia several times on foreign contracts .

Stoddart attended a small grammar school in his hometown of Stockton, where he was already enthusiastic about geography and independently designed maps of Tibet . In 1956 he began studying geography at St. John's College , Cambridge . Along with a schoolmate, he was the first graduate from his school to make the jump to Oxbridge .

Even as a student, Stoddart went on numerous excursions to remote areas of the world. For research purposes, for example, he traveled by train to India or by ship to Sierra Leone . Reading an old article by Charles Darwin aroused his interest in coral reefs and so, in 1964, an expedition to British Honduras , today's Belize , resulted in his doctoral thesis on the geomorphology of reefs.

Postdoc and professorship in Cambridge

He then began to give lectures in Cambridge, initially as a demonstrator and from 1967 as a university lecturer . In 1966 he became a fellow at Churchill College .

One of his first expeditions after his doctorate took him to the Addu Atoll in the southern Maldives . His research station was established on a Royal Air Force military base on Gan Island that had been in existence since World War II . Here he learned from a British officer that there were plans on the part of the government to set up an Air Force base on the Seychelles atoll Aldabra .

Alerted by the negative effects of such an air force base on the flora and fauna that he was able to observe in Gan, Stoddart campaigned vehemently for the protection of Aldabra. In 1965 he led a Royal Society expedition to the atoll, which described numerous endemic animal and plant species for the first time, mapped breeding sites for seabirds and explored the native giant tortoises . On his return he found an advocate for Aldabra in the British House of Commons in Tam Dalyell , and the Royal Society did valuable lobbying work , so that the then Defense Minister Denis Healey finally relented and looked for other locations for his military base. Today Aldabra is part of the World Heritage of UNESCO .

For more than three decades, Stoddart led an average of three tropical expeditions per year and worked closely with researchers from India , the People's Republic of China , America , Europe and Australasia . He coordinated the publication of the Coral Reefs journal , initiated the four-year Coral Reef Symposium and became the first President of the International Society for Reef Studies in 1980 . He was also instrumental in making 1997 the International Year of the Reef and played a central role in founding the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network .

Stoddart was considered a good lecturer and inspiring research director; many of his former students held prestigious academic positions in geomorphological institutes in Europe, Australia and the United States. In addition to his numerous field studies, he also showed a great interest in the history of his scientific discipline and, for example, published the monograph On Geography and its History in 1986 . Although he rarely found new or previously unknown sources for his publications, his writing style was considered pleasant to read and amusing .

Professor at Berkeley

In Cambridge at the end of the 1980s, Stoddart found it increasingly difficult to raise the necessary funds for his research trips, which is why he accepted an offer from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988 , where he was made head of the Department of Geography. Under his leadership, the institute hired two women for the first time, and he also established research expeditions for master’s students.

Stoddart was a noticeable figure on campus in Berkeley, which was due to his stately figure, the red beard and his fancy dress style (he often wore white shorts even in winter). He also sometimes offended, for example when he criticized the many, in his opinion only partially useful, compulsory lectures given by the new students. In 1994 he had to give up the chairmanship of the institute and in 2000 he was retired .

The long time in the tropics, during which he was exposed to strong sunlight, with only limited protection, was not without consequences for his health. Stoddart was diagnosed with skin cancer for the first time in the 1950s . In his later years there was also diabetes . After his health had deteriorated recently, Stoddart died in November 2014. He had been married since 1961 and left behind his wife June, his daughter Aldabra and his son Michael.

Awards and honors

Fonts (selection)

Books

Scientific Article

In his academic career, Stoddart wrote over 100 articles that were published in academic journals. This includes:

  • Stoddart, DR 1965. Geography and the ecological approach. The ecosystem as a geographic principle and method. Geography , 50 (3), 242-251.
  • Stoddart, DR 1966. Darwin's impact on geography . Annals of the Association of American Geographers 56 (4), 683-698.
  • Stoddart, DR 1969. Ecology and morphology of recent coral reefs. Biological Reviews 44 (4), 433-498.
  • Stoddart, DR 1972. Catastrophic damage to coral-reef communities by Madang earthquake 1970. Nature 239, 51.
  • Stoddart, DR, RF McLean, TP Scoffin, BG Thom and D. Hopley. 1978. Evolution of Reefs and Islands, Northern Great Barrier Reef: Synthesis and Interpretation . Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B . 284 (999): 149-159.
  • Stoddart, DR 1987. To claim the high ground: geography for the end of the century. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 327-336.
  • Ellison, JC & Stoddart, DR 1991. Mangrove ecosystem collapse during predicted sea-level rise: Holocene analogues and implications. Journal of Coastal Research 151-165.
  • Ellison, JC, & Stoddart, DR 1991. Mangrove ecosystem collapse during predicted sea-level rise: Holocene analogues and implications. Journal of Coastal Research 151-165.
  • Stoddart, DR 1994. `This coral episode ': Darwin, Dana, and the coral reefs of the Pacific. Darwin and the Pacific: essays on evolutionary theory and natural history in the laboratory of the Pacific 1840-1920 , edited by RM MacLeod and PF Rehbock. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 21-48.
  • Stoddart, DR 1994. Theory and reality: the success and failure of the deductive method in coral reef studies: Darwin to Davis. Earth Sciences History 13, 21-34.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Obituary on independent.co.uk, accessed on March 6, 2015
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Obituary on theguardian.com , accessed March 6, 2015
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Obituary on telegraph.co.uk , accessed March 6, 2015
  4. ↑ a b Obituary on geog.cam.ac.uk, accessed on March 6, 2015
  5. ↑ a b c d Obituary on geography.berkeley.edu ( Memento from March 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), archive accessed on February 28, 2016
  6. ↑ obituary dailycal.org (Engl.) Called on March 6, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Stoddart, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stoddart, David Ross (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British biogeographer
DATE OF BIRTH November 15, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Stockton-on-teas
DATE OF DEATH 23rd November 2014
Place of death Berkeley , California