Lawrence R. Pomeroy

Lawrence Richards Pomeroy (June 2, 1925, Sayre, Pennsylvania – March 26, 2020, Burlington, North Carolina) was a zoologist, ecologist, and oceanographer.[1][2]

Biography

His family lived in Watkins Glen, New York, until they moved in the mid 1930s to Pass-a-Grille, Florida. As a high school student at St. Petersburg High School, he wrote a nature column for the local newspaper and worked as a crew member of the commercial fishing boat Wye Goodie. At the University of Michigan he graduated in zoology with a B.S. in 1947 and an M.S. in 1948. At Rutgers University he received in 1951 a Ph.D. in marine science. His doctoral dissertation on the physiology of oysters was supervised by Harold Haley "Hal" Haskin (1915–2002). As a postdoc Pomeroy worked at New Jersey's Oyster Research Laboratory (later renamed the Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory). From 1954 to 1960 he worked at the University of Georgia Marine Institute, located on Sapelo Island and founded in 1953. In 1960 he became a faculty member in the University of Georgia's zoology department and moved with his family to Athens, Georgia.[1]

Robert E. Johannes (1936–2002) and Pomeroy planned and led the 1971 Symbios Expedition to Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The expedition lasted two months. The research vessel R/V Alpha Helix and shore-based facilities provided laboratory and logistical support. During the expedition the research vessel was docked at a pier located on Japtan Island in the Marshall Islands. The expedition, with an interdisciplinary crew of 25 ecologists and oceanographers, set a new standard for comprehensive study of a coral reef.[3]

Dr. Pomeroy’s contributions to science were many, including research that changed our understanding of phosphorus cycling, the promotion and use of high-quality food web modeling, and studies of how temperature limits Arctic food webs. He is probably best known, however, for developing the concept of the “microbial loop.” His 1974 paper in BioScience, “The Ocean’s Food Web: A Changing Paradigm,” completely upended the established scientific understanding of the trophic dynamics of the ocean. His idea that microbes, rather than large organisms, were the driving force in marine food webs was radical at the time, and only began to be accepted in the 1980s when they were backed up by another scientist, Farooq Azam, using new technology. This concept of the microbial loop became highly influential in terrestrial soil ecology as well.[1]

... “The Microbial Loop Symposium” was organized in 1993 to honor his enormous contributions to aquatic microbiology. He was one of the first to promote and use high-quality food web modeling, bringing to fruition syntheses of salt marsh ecosystems function. He had a continuing interest in the connections between continental shelf waters and both estuarine and deeper waters.[2]

In April 1952 in New Jersey he married Janet Klerk (1929–2009). Upon his death he was survived by his daughter, his son, and three grandchildren.

Awards and honors

Selected publications

as editor

References
  1. "Ecology community mourns Lawrence R. Pomeroy". Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia (ecology.uga.edu). 2020.
  2. D'Elia, Christopher F.; Palmer, R. Eugene (April 6, 2020). "Tribute: Lawrence R. Pomeroy". Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia (ecology.uga.edu).
  3. D’Elia, C. F.; Harris, A. R. "The R/V Alpha Helix Expedition: A retrospective analysis of a milestone in coral reef research", pp. 38–42 of Proceedings of the 11th Coral Reef Symposium, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, 7–11 July 2008
  4. "Odum Award - Lifetime Achievement". cerf.science.
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