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OBITUARY Dick van Harten: Memoriam W.A. van den Bold On
October 20, Willem Aaldert van den Bold passed away.
We mourn for one of the greatest ostracodologists of our time.
As the godfather of one of the famous post-war Utrecht school
with Ko Kingma and Jan Keij, Wim van den Bold palyed a leading part in
the worldwide revival of our science around the middle of the century. He was a Treatise author and highly instrumental in the
eventual foundation of IRGO. Living
and working in the U.S. for the most part of his career, he not only put
together the ostracodology of the framework. First and foremost,
however, we will remember Wim as an honourable and exceptionally modest
man who was particularly opposed gto all forms of scientific snobbery
and pushing. He was a true
colleague who was always interested and willing to help, and with whom
it was very easy to become friends.
His exquisite, highly refined sense of humor is unforgettable. May his family find
strength, and may Wim rest in peace. Eugen K. Kempf: Professor Dr. Willem Aaldert van den Bold I felt great sadness when
I learned of the passing away of Professor Dr. Willem Aaldert van den
Bold. Somehow the beginning of
my scientific career as a student of geology and palaeontology and the
official end as a professor of geology, especially micropalaeontology,
at the University of Cologne in Germany was connected with the person of
Wim van den Bold. It was in the summer of
1962, when I met Wim for the first time. At that time I had
returned to the Geological Institute of the University at Cologne from
Toenisberg in the Lower Rhine area.
In that region I had lived for several months to utilize the fact
of a new shaft sinking down to the Carboniferous coal-bearing beds.
With progressing shaft sinking, I myself had taken several large
series of samples of the continental Pleistocene and marine Tertiary
beds that have been penetrated down to a depth of 275 m.
At the Institute, I was then working for my master’s and for my
doctoral degree on the whole fauna (ostracods, mollusks, vertebrate
remains) and flora (pollen and spores, fruits and seeds, charophytes) of
Middle Pleistocene interglacial beds that had been disclosed in shaft
Toenisberg. Wim van den Bold came to
the Geological Institute of the University at Cologne as a guest
professor. During May,
June, and July, 1962 he conducted two series of lectures:
one on Ostracoda, and one on the geology of the Middle America
region. I think I learned a
lot on Ostracoda through Wim. And
it has been the right time. The
“Grundzuge der zoologischen Mikropalontologie” of Vladimir Pokorny
(1958), the Russian “Osnovy volume” (1960), and the American
“Treatise volume” on Ostracoda (1961) had just been published, and
also the first volume of Frank van Morkhoven on the “Post-Palaeozoic
Ostracoda” (1962) had just appeared. Wim made use of all those volumes, but in his very modest way
he also explained his criticism. Although he was one of the contributing
authors of the American Treatise volume, he was also not satisfied with
everything in it. I was
confirmed by Wim to use textbooks and handbooks
with a certain cautiousness.
And I learned from Wim to recognize the real quality of
publications on Ostracoda, as those by G.W. Mueller, Erich Triebel, A.J.
Keij, and many others. Later, I exchanged
letters and reprints with Wim, and I met him sometimes at international
meetings, in 1982, for instance, at Rosalie’s Ostracoda Symposium in
Houston. When I retired officially
from my post at Cologne University in 1997, colleagues and students of
mine had not only prepared a “Festschrift volume”, edited by
Roseline Weiss, but they also had organized a special symposium in my
honour. And Wim van den Bold was the official scientific speaker with
a lecture on the importance of micropalaeontological research for the
biogeography and biostratigraphy of the Cribbean region. With the Ostracoda and the biostratigraphy of the Caribbean region, the name of Wim van den Bold will be connected forever. Deaths of Paleozoic ostracod workers: Ekaterina Gusseva
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