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For Love of Eisner Thomas Eisner (1929–2011)

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For Love of Eisner Thomas Eisner (1929–2011) J Chem Ecol (2011) 37:546–547 DOI 10.1007/s10886-011-9951-2 OBITUARY For Love of Eisner Thomas Eisner (1929–2011) Robert A. Raguso Published online: 28 April 2011 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 On March 25, 2011, Chemical Ecology lost one of its unrivaled in its humble and joyous account of a life spent original guiding lights, Thomas Eisner, after a long and pondering nature. Its passages resonate with anyone whose courageous battle with Parkinson’s Disease. By now, scientific career was sparked by early encounters with the numerous obituaries have detailed his prolific career as a natural world and was sustained by a desire to understand research scientist, photographer, musician and champion of its inner workings. As an adult, Tom continued to seek environmental and human rights. Equally well documented inspiration through critical observations of natural history, is his intriguing personal odyssey, beginning as a child accompanied by his wife and lifelong collaborator Maria refugee from fascist Europe and ending as a beloved (Loebell) Eisner, the naturalist Mark Deyrup, and their professor emeritus at Cornell University. Others have students. These observations invariably were followed by profiled his numerous awards in recognition of his bioassays in which hapless frogs, birds, spiders, ants or fish excellence in research (National Medal of Science, Carty were duped into approaching a would-be prey item, only to Award of the National Academy of Sciences), his ability to get splattered with some noxious defensive secretion. communicate the joy of scientific discovery (Lewis Thomas Although Tom’s explorations required increasingly more Prize, New York Film Festival Grand Prize) and his tireless sophisticated tools, these only enhanced, rather than dedication to conservation (Tyler Prize for Environmental diminished, the Eisnerian sense of wonder so familiar to Achievement). Instead, in this brief essay I celebrate Tom’s generations of Cornell students. unusual scientific vision, rooted in the synergism between Tom was a great aficionado of analytical equipment, natural history and the experimental study of mechanism, especially anything that pushed the limits of optics, and nurtured through collaborations across the physical microscopy and high speed/resolution photography. So sciences. The Eisner Vision figured prominently in the many of his group’s seminal contributions, including the establishment of Chemical Ecology as a field, as well as the mechanisms of benzoquinone emission by bombardier founding of my home department (Neurobiology and beetles, the adhesion of the palmetto beetle’s tarsal bristles Behavior) at Cornell. It is carried forward today by his to leaf surfaces, and the “hidden” patterns of UV reflectance former students and remains a unifying philosophy among in flower petals, were communicated through stunning the new generation of chemical ecologists at Cornell, with photographic images. As accomplished a photographer as whom I have the privilege of working. Tom was, he benefited from (and lovingly acknowledged) Tom Eisner’s keen interest in natural history was kindled Maria’s mastery of SEM, and frequently recounted in during his childhood in Uruguay, described glowingly in lectures his awestruck encounter with Harold “Doc” his autobiographical “For Love of Insects”. Aside from Edgerton, MIT’s pioneer of strobe photography, whose Niko Tinbergen’s “Curious Naturalists”, I find this book high speed wizardry revealed the cooling mechanism for the abdominal emission chambers of bombardier beetles. Tom also enjoyed a long and fruitful collaboration with * R. A. Raguso ( ) Dan Aneshansley, an engineer who devised elegant Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14305, USA methods for measuring the physical properties (e.g. heat e-mail: [email protected] evolution, force transduction) by which beetles defend J Chem Ecol (2011) 37:546–547 547 themselves against predators. Of course, it was Tom’s were rife with fitness tradeoffs, cost-benefit analyses and career-long partnership with Jerry Meinwald, whose contingency. The students responsible for these studies group provided critical expertise in analytical chemistry, are among today’s most conceptually sophisticated which had the greatest impact on our field. Tom and interpreters of animal (and plant) behavior. Like Tom, Jerry’s decades of identifying strange compounds from their current research builds upon the foundation of even stranger glands led them through a forest of natural natural history with sophisticated experimental manipu- products, from the C10 cyclopentanoid constituents of lations of visual and acoustic as well as chemical and catnip (nepetalactone) and walking stick defensive sprays metabolic signals, in studies designed to explicitly (anisomorphal), to carminic acid, lucibufagin steroids and measure fitness consequences. pyrrolizidine alkaloids that protect cochineal bugs, fire- Finally, Tom felt that by combining aesthetically flies and tiger moths, respectively, from a grisly death. In appealing patterns with rigorous experimental elucidation the quality and quantity of their collaborative output, of their underlying processes, he could more effectively Eisner and Meinwald were the “Lennon and McCartney” communicate the splendor and importance of the natural of Chemical Ecology, and their “greatest hits” continue world to a broader public, and educate them on the dire need to inspire students of chemical defense, counter-defense to conserve nature’s pharmacopoeia for future generations. In and mimicry. As interest (and expertise) in natural the final passage of “For Love of Insects”, Tom described the product elucidation continues to wane among university mutual dependence between the role of nature in sustaining chemistry departments, we are reminded of how crucial human curiosity and the increasingly urgent role of human such collaborations are to the continued growth of our curiosity (and its valuation) in preserving the world’s field. During his last years, this remained one of Tom’s remaining wild places. “Will the collective urge to discover greatest concerns. keep natural history alive?” he asked. “Without [human] Tom sometimes lamented that his research had been curiosity, without a passion for discovery, nature cannot criticized for its “lack of conceptual framework”, but this endure. And without nature, curiosity will fade…It is so criticism was shortsighted. In his foreword to “For Love of fundamentally human to thirst for knowledge and to turn to Insects”,Tom’s friend and intellectual gadfly E.O. Wilson nature for visions of the unknown”. likened him to a pointillist painter, from whose body of Thomas Eisner inspired generations of chemical ecologists focused, detailed case studies emerges a canvas rich with to turn to nature for chemical visions of the unknown, visions patterns “of evolutionary adaptation, molecular evolution, that have given form and structure to the increasingly complex behavior and life cycles that likely would not have been interaction webs that we now study in terrestrial, aquatic revealed by other means”. As a group, chemical ecologists and marine environments across the globe, as communi- have been slow to grasp evolutionary theory and slower cated in this journal. He will be sorely missed by those to embrace conditionality in the interactions whose who were inspired by his vision and his unquenchable mechanisms they dissect with such care. Not so with sense of wonder about the natural world. I will remember Tom and his students, whose studies of butterfly him fondly, along with his tales of toxic steroids and courtship, tiger moth alkaloid acquisition, spider web femmes fatales, whenever fireflies light up the humid construction or herbivore-induced nicotine mobilization summer evenings of Ithaca. PERSPECTIVES RETROSPECTIVE A biologist who marveled at insects and their arsenal of compounds sparked the fi eld Thomas Eisner (1929–2011) of chemical ecology. Jerrold Meinwald ith the passing of transmitted his unmistakable enthusiasm for Thomas Eisner on 25 his subject perfectly, and it is no wonder that WMarch 2011, at the age he inspired so many of his audience members. of 81, the world has lost one of its Eisner’s skill as a photographer made his most original and infl uential sci- lectures particularly interesting and added entists. We owe the development substantially to the impact of his publica- of the contemporary discipline of tions as well. In this context, his extensive chemical ecology largely to him. collaboration with his wife, Maria, who Eisner was fascinated by insects became an expert in electron microscopy, is throughout his childhood. Wher- especially noteworthy. Many of his papers in ever he found himself, he would Science appeared in issues whose cover pic- observe in meticulous detail the tures he provided. behaviors of his favorite “bugs,” No account of Tom Eisner’s life should carefully noticing how these mar- omit mention of his love of music. He was velously diverse creatures man- an outstanding pianist and had the remark- aged their interactions with one able ability to sight-read just about anything another and with their environ- placed before him as if it were something he ment. He maintained a lifelong had been playing for years. He especially curiosity and regard for insects enjoyed inviting old and new friends and visi- on November 8, 2011 and their chemical treasures. tors to his home for musical evenings, which Born on 25
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