On 25 October 1997, Nicholas Grekoff died in Paris. He was 90 years old. Born at Novotcherkask, Russia, the first part of his life is similar to an adventure story. After the Russian Revolution (1917), his family emigrated to Constantinople (after crossing the Black Sea on a small boat) and then reached Paris, France, in 1923. Without any financial support, Grekoff will be successively car-cleaner, joiner with his father and taxi driver. Nevertheless, through sheer determination, he succeeded to pass the Baccalaureate and undertook university studies. After the Second War (where he will be prisoner in Silesia (1940-42), he returned to France, having the opportunity to complete his formation. Geology Engineer from Nancy University, he entered the "Societe Nationale des Petroles d'Aquitaine" at Dax and from 1950 the "Institut Francais du Petrole" near Paris. He retired in 1972.
The French Ostracodologist Group regrets the passing away of an authority in our science, a Master of always positive attitude and an outstanding friend for young as for less young generations of ostracode workers. Pioneer for systematics and biostratigraphy in France, surrounding countries, and especially Africa, it was also specialized in applications for petroleum geology (more than 50 papers published). Another aspect of activities was teaching both at "Ecole du Petrole" of I.F.P. and "Laboratoire de Micropaleontologie" of Paris VI University (1956-1974().
Complementary data will be given soon in Revue de Micropaleontologie, Paris (H.J. Oertli).
May Nicolas Grekoff rest in peace.

Henri J. Oertli, Jean-Francois Babinot, and the French Ostracodologist Group

Franciscus Petrus Cornelius Maria (Frank) Van Morkhoven was born Nat 28, 1922 in Tilburg, The Netherlands, and died suddenly of aortic aneurysm on March 21, 1993, in Houston, Texas. Frank was preceded in death by his parents, Cornelius and Lamberdina Van Morkhoven, and his brothers, Pierre and Kees Van Morkhoven. At an early age, Frank's parents recognized his exceptional intelligence and sent him to the most challenging schools in The Hague, where the family had relocated. Frank had a wonderful memory, and was able to recall virtually everything he had learned during his early education throughout his life. As a young boy, he traveled all over Europe on his bicycle and gained fluency in seven languages.
During the advent of World War II, German troops parachuted into The Hague one May morning, and Frank and some of his friends were sent into the interior for safety. From there, he and two of his closest friends set out to walk and hitch rides to get to England so that they could come back and fight the Germans. They traveled to Spain where they made an attempt to reach England via the Pyrenees Mountains. Unfortunately, they were captured five miles from freedom, charged with high treason against the Third Reich, and transported to Germany where they were confined to a forced labor camp for three years or until the end of the war. Frank was the only one who survived this concentration camp. He managed to escape three times and was recaptured twice. The third time he made it back to Holland and was sent to serve in the Scottish Brigade.
Because of his linguistic abilities, Frank joined a British intelligence group in West Germany after the war. There he tracked war criminals, some known to him personally. Due to his excellent German, Frank was sent behind the Iron Curtain three times as an espionage agent in order to bring out scientists who were valuable to the United States and wanted asylum.
After the war, Frank went to work for Royal Dutch Shell in The Hague on Dec. 1, 1949. His first job was lab technician (sample washer and "jack of all trades" in the micropaleontological laboratories). Robert Hennington (Mandeville, Louisiana, 2/23/95) related that Frank's first boss in Shell told him that this job was all Frank would ever attain. Frank soon proved his supervisor wrong. Shell sent Frank to Indonesia (Borneo-/Sumatra) from 1950-1952; he returned to The Hague paleontology laboratory in 1953. Frank was in Owerri, Nigeria with Shell from Jan. 1954 to April, 1956, and again returned to The Hague paleontological laboratory where he worked from April, 1956 to Dec., 1959. During this period he helped train many new recruits for Shell. In 1956, at the request of the Bataafsche Internationale Petroleum Maatschappij, The Hague, Frank began to write an ostracode handbook for Shell. Shell transferred Frank to Lafayette, Louisiana in December, 1959, and he worked there and in New Orleans, Louisiana until November, 1965. He was moved to Houston toward the end of 1965 and remained with Shell's Bellaire Stratigraphical laboratory until his retirement as Senior Staff Paleontologist in June, 1985. Frank was instrumental in training many of Shell's micropaleontologists during his tenure in the Bellaire laboratory. After retirement Frank set up his own consulting business under the name "Micropaleo". He also did some teaching for Shell, Mobil, and several other oil companies.
Despite his lack of formal college training, Frank eventually became a world-renowned micropaleontologist and the published author of two major textbooks, a monograph on bathyal benthic foraminifers and several scientific articles. Ted Cook (Houston, Texas), Frank's supervisor at the Shell Ballaire Stratigraphic Laboratory, related that Frank and Jan Postuma went to work for Royal Dutch Shell at about the same time. Since Postuma put together a Shell in-house report that later became circulated widely (Postuma, 1971, Manual of Planktonic Foraminifera; Elsevier Pub. Co., 420 p.), we suspect that Frank's contact with Dr. Postuma stimulated his later interest in pelagic foraminifera. Indeed, Frank and Adolph G. Schroder (retired in Delft, The Netherlands) were working on a revision of a Shell fossil pelagic foraminifera Handbook when Frank retired from Shell.
In the fall of 1957, Dr. Willem A. Van den Bold, then a Royal Dutch Shell micropaleontologist (and later a member of the coauthor's Dissertation Committee at Louisiana State University, 1961-63), was asked to work with Frank on a company manual on Post-Paleozoic ostracodes. Van den Bold drove with Frank to Frankfurt, Germany where he introduced Frank to Dr. Erich Triebel. Dr. Triebel was an acknowledged authority on living and fossil ostracodes and Frank gained valuable insights from Dr. Triebel which were later incorporated into Frank's two volume work (Morkhoven, Van, F.P.C.M., 1962, Post-Paleozoic Ostracoda, Their Morphology, Taxonomy, and Economic Use, Vol. 1, General, 204 p., Vol. 2, Generic Descriptions, 763 p., Elsevier Pub. Co.). Later, Frank published a major paper on depth relationships of modern ostracodes (Morkhoven, F.P.C.M., 1972, Bathymetry of Recent Marine Ostracoda in the Northwest Gulf of Mexico: Trans. Gulf Coast Assoc. Geological Societies, 22: 241-252.)
During the late seventies (1977, 1979), the coauthor organized two Industrial Short Courses in Micropaleontology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln (Krutak, P.R., 1977, University of Nebraska First Short Course in Micropaleontology, June 27-July 7, 1977, 300 p.; Krutak, P.R., 1979, University of Nebraska Second Short Course in Micropaleontology, June 4-15, 1979, 205 p.) Frank was asked to teach the section on Ostracoda in 1977 but had to decline because of Shell commitments; however, he was able to participate in 1979 and his chapter was an invaluable addition to this course. Later, in 1980, Frank taught another Industrial Short course for the Institute of Geology at Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City (Morkhoven, Van, F.P.C.M., 1980, Notes on Post-Paleozoic Ostracoda, 38 p., in Gio-Argaez, R. and Nidia Escalante, coord., 1980, Curso de Micropaleontolkogia Aplicada, Octubre 6-26, 1980, Instituto de Geologia, UNAM, Mexico, D.F.) The coauthor was Asesor (Coordinator) for this course and well remembers the impact that Frank's entertaining presentation had on his Latin American audience.
In 1982, Frank and Ted Cook, Manager of the Stratigraphic Services Group at the Shell's Bellaire Laboratory in Houston, Texas, helped organize a Consortium of oil companies (Arco, chevron, Shell, Texaco, Unocal) that met with William Berggren's group at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in order to compile an Atlas of Tertiary Cosmopolitan Bathyal Benthic Foraminifera. This project was an outcome of Frank's earlier work with the Shell that resulted in his preliminary range chart that was issued with the Proceedings volume of the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies Annual meeting in Corpus Christi, Texas, Oct. 21-23, 1981. The spring 1983 meeting at WHOI was a special session on "Foraminifera and Evolution" and was videotaped by Woods Hole. I (Krutak) have seen and listened to the videos personally. Many oil company micropaleontologists (Krutak, Ann Butler, Bill Hamlin, Howard Harper, Ron Schmidt (all of Arco), G.A. Sieglie and William Ventress (Chevron) among others), academics (Paul Belanger, Bruce Corliss, Stephen Gould, James Kennett, Ken Miller, G.P. Lohmann, Detmar Schnitker, R.C. Tjalsma, as well as USGS personnel (C.W. Poag, P.C. Valentine) participated in the program and argued constructively about various theories of organic evolution and the use of microfossils in biostratigraphy. Frank's self-taught views of evolution, gained from years of work with microfossils recovered from well drill cuttings and cores, conflicted markedly with Stephen Gould's more academic views. Frank's penetrating arguments defending his views against those of Stephen Gould's are well worth reviewing. Frank's views were published later in a short abstract (Morkhoven, Van, F.P.C.M., 1984, Species variation: ageing and/or adaptation?: Annual Midyear Meeting, SEPM, Aug 10-13, 1984, p. 83). The eventual result of the consortium meeting was a volume coauthored by Frank (Morkhoven, Van, F.P.C.M., Berggren, W.A., Edwards, A., 1986, Cenozoic Deep Water Benthic Foraminifera, Elf-Aquitaine, 421 p.)
During Frank's 40 years of service with Shell (he received extra credit for his time in the jungle), he traveled the world and collected extensive core samples which he used later in Short Courses that he taught in both industry and academe. He donated portions of his well-organized collections to the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Missouri, and the University of South Carolina. During his last 5 years, he became an expert in the use of the Macintosh and was an active member of the Macintosh Users Group (MUG). He loved to share his knowledge with others, children or adults. He survived starvation, beatings, slave labor, and a gunshot wound in the German concentration camps as well as a major plane crash in Libya, and jungle creatures in Indonesia. He beat the odds after a car wreck in Louisiana, but finally his nine-plus lives ran out when he suffered an unexpected aneurysm.
Frank was loved and respected by many including his wife, Nancy Day Van Morkhoven of Houston; daughter and son-in-law, Madeleine (BeBe) and Brian Bergeron of Lafayette, Louisiana; step-daughter and son-in-law, Kathryn and Charlie Jones of Houston; stepson Weston Jost of Hong Kong; grandchildren Christian romero, of Atlanta, Georgia; Melissa, Leah, Philip, Mathew, and Daniel Bergeron of Lafayette, Louisiana; and Hannah Jones of Houston, Texas; sister, Jane and brother-in-law Jack Abeelen of Las Vegas, Nevada; mother-in-law Pauline McLamore; sister-in-law Evelyn Van Morkhoven of West Palm Beach, Florida; aunt Mies Verbruggen and her husband Fritz of Amsterdam; cousins in Holland and Spain; many nieces and nephews; and last, but by no means least, his beloved dog, Sammie. Frank will long be remembered by a very large continent of professional micropaleontologists whom he either helped to train or to influence.

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