I also am saddened to hear of Prof. Reyment's death. He kindly aided me
in Uppsala when I was traveling as a grad student to observe fossil
primate specimens, and he showed me Chinese material from several sites
including Zhoukoudian. I recall how he was complaining about the
infighting between Stalinist and Maoist radical student groups on
campus. It was only much later that I learned about his morphometric
work through Les Marcus and others. He will be missed.
Eric Delson
CUNY & AMNH
On 3/31/2016 11:41 AM, Norman MacLeod wrote:
It is with great sadness that I inform this community of the death of Richard Reyment, who passed away
at his home in Sollentuna, Sweden, just outside Stockholm, on 30 March. A brief autobiography of
Richard’s life and work is available
at:https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__richardreyment.com_index.html&d=BQIFaQ&c=uxRm7bTqKzXs8e5WpHvdhQ&r=QsvmrqJR0YtjwRsCcawJg9FfJ-6mHfFhAx1IUIyo7A8&m=_1Nri_WOtwk2NSubYPK_nLTwqmbWMKYoFN67cslzX24&s=YWOQofIGSixW0D0Jq6wSq4Jj-VsjJ51nqZjcCk4LokY&e=
. I would not presume to improve on the information he has already provided there other than to add
that he was my good friend, a valued colleague and true intellectual of unusually broad interests,
abilities and accomplishments. I often wince when I hear someone described as a “polymath” these days
as the term has become devalued through overuse. However, Richard was a genuine polymath as his
bibliography all too readily attests. Over a career that spanned more than half a century Richard
assimilated a vast body of knowledge of about quantitative data analysis, morphometrics, palaeontology,
geology and a variety of other fields by remaining an active and engaged researcher as well as a
teacher, editor, author and administrator. In pursuing these interests he had the good fortune to be
able to undertake this assimilation piece-by-piece, paper-by-paper, book-by-book as these fields were
developing; through their heydays at it were. Now, there is simply too much information being published
by too many people on too many topics to allow anyone to develop the sort of synoptic understanding
Richard achieved for even a single speciality, much less half-a-dozen. People like Richard are now
passing from the scene. That is a tragedy for us all. Possibly with one or two rare exceptions, we’ll
not see their like again.
Richard’s daughter Britt-Louse has informed me that his funeral will be held in
the next few weeks and will be attended only by the family.
Norm MacLeod
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