The passing on 30 September 2018 in Washington DC of Jeannette Aspden, colleague from IIASA and the Carnegie Commission, elicits a brief written tribute.   Celebrations and remembrances of our colleagues have accumulated over the years, and we re-post them here.

Jeannette Aspden (Remembrance 2018)
Robert Herman (In Memory of Robert Herman, 1997)
Alexander Keynan (The Germination of Alexander Keynan, in memoriam, 2013)

Robert Kates (The Classification of Robert Kates, 2018)
Joshua Lederberg (In memoriam, 2008)
Joshua Lederberg (A Tribute to the Foresight of Joshua Lederberg, 2009)
Thomas F. Malone (Tom Malone here [poem], 1984)

Rodney Nichols (Remembrance, 2018)
William A. Nierenberg (Memorial Tribute, 2000)
Chauncey Starr (A 90th Birthday Tribute, 2002)

Oleg F. Vasiliev, 1925-2017 (scroll to second entry past Beck tribute)
Paul E. Waggoner (Thriving Thrift: On the Occasion of Paul Waggoner Appreciation Day, 2013)
Robert M. White (Portrait of Robert M. White in the style of Gertrude Stein, 1979)

Norton Zinder (A Remembrance of Norton Zinder, 2012)

William Nordhaus today earned the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his pioneering work on climate change.  Hooray for Bill!

Jesse first encountered Bill’s work in the late 1970s, started a magazine file of it, and retains to this day first editions of the classic inventive papers from 1975, Can We Control Carbon Dioxide?, and 1977, Strategies for the Control of Carbon Dioxide, and others that followed (see photo below).

Jesse served as a research assistant to Bill during the 1981-1983 Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee of the National Academy of Sciences and co-authored with him the 1983 paper, JH Ausubel, WD Nordhaus. A review of estimates of future carbon dioxide emissions in Changing climate: Report of the carbon dioxide assessment committee, pp. 153-185, National Academy Press, Washington DC 1983.

Fred Pearce writes about our exploration of whether humanity is nearing peak use of stuff in this article in Anthropocene magazine: Are We Approaching Peak Stuff? Almost imperceptibly, we are stepping off the consumption treadmill

The Census of Marine Life appears in a vivid 29 Sept 2018 article in the Huffington Post by Ilana Straus  about estimating the number of species.

We note with sadness learning of the passing of John C. Fisher on 2 May 2018 at age 98.  With Robert Pry, John Fisher developed the classic A simple substitution model of technological change JC Fisher, RH Pry – Technological Forecasting and Social Change 3, pp76-88, 1971.  Much of our work  (especially by Perrin Meyer, Jason Yung, and David Burg) has built on the Fisher-Pry model, culminating in the software package Loglet Lab 4.

The interesting account of John’s life and career by his family would have been more complete if it included discussion of the substitution model.  The General Electric Corporation research labs have made extraordinary contributions.

The fall issue of the quarterly magazine of the National Academy of Engineering, The Bridge, reports on Ocean Exploration and its Engineering Challenges Sept 2018 Vol 48(3).

The issue contains several excellent articles, including America’s Ocean Observations: A Perspective, by Paul Gaffney, our partner in the Monmouth University-Rockefeller University Marine Science and Policy Initiative.  The article helpfully discusses Mark Stoeckle’s work on eDNA.

Also especially notable are Mapping the World’s Oceans by our frequent collaborator Larry A. Mayer, and Using Noise to Image the Ocean by William A. Kuperman.

These and the other articles relate strongly to our interests in ocean exploration (e.g., the 2016 National Ocean Exploration Forum), The International Quiet Ocean Experiment, and more generally human progress in ocean observation.

The Monmouth University-Rockefeller University Marine Science and Policy Initiative (MURU) will be hosting the ‘National Conference on Marine and Environmental eDNA‘ to help accelerate marine environmental DNA science and applications by bringing together researchers, government agencies, and private foundations. Major themes will include Technology development, Bioinformatics, and eDNA biology.

The conference will held Thursday-Friday, November 29-30, 2018 at The Rockefeller University, New York, NY

The USA Strategy Group for the International Quiet Ocean Experiment held its 4th annual meeting 28-30 August at the Marine Policy Center of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where Jesse Ausubel works each July-August.  We focused on opportunities to speed learning with passive acoustics in the Gulf of Mexico.   Attendees were Dave Bradley, Paul Gaffney, Cynthia Pyc, Jennifer Miksis-Olds, Kelly Oskvig, Ruth Perry, Jon White, George Frisk, Peter Tyack, Jesse Ausubel, Ed Urban, and Alan Curry, as well as Dick Pittenger (not in photo).  We enjoyed a tour of Ray Dalio’s Exploration Vessel Alucia which was docked at WHOI.

Our beloved friend and colleague Rodney Nichols passed away on 30 August 2018 in New York City.  Rod introduced Jesse Ausubel and Doris Manville, who have now worked together in the Program for the Human Environment for more than 25 years.  Numerous interests, programs, and organizations united us, including scientific cooperation between nations in conflict and The Rockefeller University itself.  Here are notices in the 2 September New York Times from Rod’s family and from The Rockefeller University.  We will miss Rod greatly.

Jesse offers a Remembrance.

Over 200 news outlets so far, including the Washington Post and New York Times published the Associated Press story that opens with reference to Mark Stoeckle’s East River eDNA work.

Telltale bits of DNA help track past and elusive wildlife