The Contributions of David Malcolm Raup (24 April 1933–9 July 2015)

Abstract

In recounting the exploits of the renowned test pilot and World War II ace Chuck Yeager, Tom Wolfe (1979) observed that Yeager’s calm, West Virginian drawl can still be heard in the voices of virtually all commercial pilots, decades after Yeager became the first to break the sound barrier. This inflection caught on in the late 1940s among a cadre of Yeager’s disciples at an airfield in the high desert of California, who sought to emulate the “ace of aces,” and it spread further, from generation to generation, aided by the participation of many of those disciples as astronauts in NASA’s manned space program. During the heady days of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, the drawl and demeanor could be heard regularly in televised exchanges between astronauts and mission control. Little did any of us know that the voice was really Chuck Yeager’s. Wolfe’s description of Yeager’s influence on his peers reminds us that, in any field, there are a few people whose work is so transcendent that, by dint of the examples they set, colleagues seek to emulate not only their methods, but also how they carry themselves in the arena. And so it was with Dave Raup, one of the most influential paleontologists of the past half-century, who died this past summer after a brief illness. As is often true of people who become the best of the best, Dave did not actively seek the limelight. In fact, he tended to avoid it and was never particularly comfortable as the center of attention in any forum. But the way he carried himself—actively seeking out holes in his own results; not dismissing someone else’s work without first fully understanding it; letting one’s work, rather than one’s ego, do the talking; accommodating one’s own self-doubts but not being defeated …