A diverse scientific life

Abstract

I am very honoured to be awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Paleolimnological Association (IPA). I was delighted when two of my teachers and mentors, Frank Oldfield (2010) and Herb Wright (2010), were awarded Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2009 at the Guadalajara IPA symposium—I never thought I would be following them 3 years later in Glasgow. In accepting this Award, I must first make a confession. Despite becoming a Quaternary pollen analyst and vegetation historian in 1961, I did not do any real palaeolimnology until 1986, although I had paddled a little in Crose Mere and Diss Mere and studied their fascinating palaeolimnology in 1976 and 1979. I have never counted a diatom, cladoceran, chironomid, or chrysophyte cyst in my life. I only know the taxa as eight-character codes (e.g. TA003A, Cory amb) for variables in computer programs such as CANOCO, C2, WACALIB, etc. I have been very fortunate to have a wonderfully diverse and intellectually rich and challenging scientific life, including my mid-career conversion to quantitative palaeolimnology in 1987. My scientific interests, activities, and publications fall into seven main groups (Fig. 1), all of which continue to the present day. These are (1) pollen analysis, vegetation history, and palaeoecology starting in 1961, (2) bryology starting in 1963, (3) floristics and alpine botany starting in 1965, (4) plant ecology starting in 1965, (5) quantitative palaeoecology starting in 1972, (6) plant geography starting in 1976, and (7) palaeolimnology starting fully in 1987. Although I try to maintain these various interests, increasing age and decreasing memory capacity for further alpine plant names reduce my alpine botanical activities. Lack of time limits my bryological activities, and plant ecology and plant geography are increasingly becoming secondary interests, simply because the size of the current relevant literature is totally overwhelming. I find it near impossible to keep up with the exponentially increasing literature on pollen analysis, quantitative palaeoecology, and The author was the recipient of a ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ presented by the International Paleolimnology Association (IPA) in Glasgow, UK on 22 August 2012.