-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Peter Sneath (1923-2011)
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2011 13:35:53 -0400
From: F. James Rohlf <ro...@life.bio.sunysb.edu>
Reply-To: <ro...@life.bio.sunysb.edu>
To: morphmet <morphmet_modera...@morphometrics.org>
It is with great sadness that I must report that Peter Sneath, one of
the founders of numerical taxonomy and the Classification Society, died
on Friday September 9th. The funeral was held on October 5th.
Morphometricians may know of his 1967 paper on "Trend-surface analysis
of transformation grids" published in the Journal of Zoology. He was
best known for his pioneering work with R. R. Sokal that introduced the
use of statistical and mathematical methods to create classifications.
He remained a true gentleman despite the often heated arguments that
resulted - first about whether such methods and computers should be used
at all in taxonomy and then later about which methods should be used.
There is a brief announcement of his death published by the University
of Leicester here:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/people/bereavements/2010-2019/2011/09/nparticle.2011-09-15.4186255082
An obituary is available here:
http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/people/bereavements/2010-2019/2011/09/nparticle.2011-09-23.0432474544/
Another notice is available here:
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2011/09/peter-h-a-sneath-1923---2011.html
(There are also many comments in response to the notice, some relevant
and some not at all.)
I am sure there are many more.
Jim
-------------------
F. James Rohlf, John S. Toll Professor
Dept. Ecology & Evolution, Stony Brook University
P Please consider the environment before printing this email
