Jeheskel Shoshani

Shoshani was born in what is now Tel Aviv, Israel, but he held dual citizenship in the United States.[1] His interest in elephants began in his youth after he read a Hebrew copy of Willis Lindquist's Burma Boy,[2][3] which told the story of the relationship between a boy and an elephant.[4] He began his career as a zookeeper,[3] and went on to research elephants in Sri Lanka and Kenya[4] before moving to Detroit, Michigan in 1968[5] and becoming an undergraduate professor at Wayne State University around 1973.[6] Shoshani founded the Elephant Interest Group (later known as the Elephant Research Foundation) in June 1977,[1] and was the sole editor of its official magazine, Elephant (formerly Elephant Newsletter), for most of its run.[6] He also established the Elephant Research Foundation Library, through which he collected and cataloged published and archival materials, displays, and biological samples relating to elephants.[2] Shoshani was awarded his PhD from the university in 1986,[5] and taught there until he moved to Eritrea in 1998. There, he studied a poorly-known population of African bush elephants that were threatened by conflicts between Eritrea and Ethiopia[3][6] and taught at the University of Asmara until 2006.[6] Concerned about the danger of the Eritrea-Ethiopia border area,[4] he moved to Ethiopia in 2007 to continue his research, and taught at the University of Addis Ababa.[3]

During his life, Shoshani published over 168 scientific articles and books on elephants.[3] His research focused primarily on their anatomy and taxonomy, but he also studied other taxa like primates.[1] Notably, he led an extensive dissection of a 46-year old female Sri Lankan elephant named Iki from 1980-1988,[2][7] coauthored landmark papers on the elephant brain[8] and vision,[9] and was the editor and coauthor of two encyclopedic volumes on elephants and their relatives: the technical The Proboscidea: Evolution and Palaeoecology of Elephants and Their Relatives, and the laymen-oriented Elephants: Majestic Creatures of The Wild.[1][3] He was also partially or wholly responsible for naming multiple proboscidean taxa, including the suborder Plesielephantiformes,[10] the family Numidotheriidae,[11] and the species Eritreum melakeghebrekristosi.[12]