Leo Buss

Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Professor of Geology and Geophysics, Curator of Invertebrates, Peabody Museum

Leo Buss, B.A, M.A., Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University, member of the faculty at Yale since 1979: You are a biologist who studies evolution and the structure of evolutionary theory. By integrating observations, experiments, and theory in novel ways outside traditional venues you have probed deeply important problems in ecology and evolution.

An attempt to reduce your activities to one word leads arguably to the term “individual”, a concept that you explored in many publications. You were also observing networks before the term “Networks” became an academic household word. You demonstrated that valid biological generalizations both about individuals and also about colonies and populations arise from the mastery of specific details in field and laboratory. By moving part of the ocean and its fauna into your laboratory, applying tools from genomics, informatics, image processing, you have identified many specific details, including about self-recognition and the dynamical behavior of organisms. For such organisms as Trichoplax, you have opened new regions in information space. After a chance encounter with programming language APL, and while engaged with the empirical research, you went on to develop with Walter Fontana a lambda calculus-based theory of biological organization which provides a new way of seeing both individuals and organizations. For your achievemnents in synthesizing paleontology and invertebrate zoology, and pioneering a new discipline in evolutionary theory you were recognized with the award no one can apply for, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

To succeed in your research you needed to master the art of feeding and caring for organisms, an art that you succeeded in extending to include students, colleagues, Yale alumni, and even members of the Administration. Undergraduates encountered you as a teacher and as Director of Undergraduate Studies. To them you were that “cool professor in bio, sporting red Converse high tops” and a DUS that gave sage and “mind expanding” advice. Your continuing scientific collaborations with your former graduate students attest to your enduring influence on minds and science well beyond Yale. Your appointment as the first Director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies prooved your skills with alumni, administrators, and colleagues; your insightful sorting of means and ends led to success in many new Yale initiatives.

Today you sport not “red sneakers” but a commuting bicycle rigged up to carry three oxygen bottles giving off eight liters of oxygen per minute, a way for you to get exercise after you developed interstitial lung disease in 2003 and could do longer swim or dive. Your commute, which you have taken on the order of four times a week, is 38 miles round trip. For this canny adjustment to a challenging situation you won an ExtraWheel trailer from ExtraWheel USA in the Practical Cycling Photo Competition Extraordinaire, enabling you to do longer bike trips hauling more oxygen. We report this not just because it is an interesting fact but because it is typical of how you see the world and what you have brought to your research, reaching out to bring ideas from different disciplines together and to find innovative solutions for difficult problems. Ever the creative spirit, you have recently even found energy to “be a student” in Astronomy and in English. As you retire, we of the Yale faculty applaud the indomitable and ingenious spirit that has led to path breaking work, knowing that you will balance Biology, Astronomy, and English as well as you balance brilliantly on your oxygen-rigged bicycle.

Tribute Editor: Penelope Laurans