paleonet Passing of Dr. Leslie F. Marcus

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From: 	Thorington.Richard@NMNH.SI.EDU
To:	<MAMMAL-L@SIVM.SI.EDU>
Date: 	2/26/02 7:31AM
Subject: 	Leslie F. Marcus

Leslie F. Marcus

We announce with great regret that Dr. Leslie F. Marcus, Research
Associate
in Paleontolgy at the American Museum of Natural History and Professor
of
Biology Emeritus at Queens College and the Graduate School of the City
University of New York, died on Friday February 22, 2002. He had been
ill
for the past year as a result of cancer and complications resulting in
his
being restricted to a wheelchair; he died at home in his sleep.

Leslie had been formally associated with the AMNH since 1976, as a
Research
Associate successively in the Departments of Living and Fossil
Invertebrates, Invertebrates and the Division of Paleontology. He
became an
Associate Professor of Biology at Queens in 1967 and was promoted to
Professor in 1970. He was a member of the graduate faculty in Ecology
and
Evolutionary Biology and a resource faculty member of NYCEP since its
inception in 1991. Also in 1991, he organized and has since moderated
MORPHMET, the International Morphometrics computer bulletin board and
listserver. He held Visiting Professorships at such universities as
Uppsala
(Sweden), Cambridge (UK) and La Sapienza (Rome). He retired from CUNY
in
2001. At the time of his death, he was Co-PI (with Eric Delson, David
Reddy
and Neil Tyson) on a major NSF grant "Visualization of high
dimensional
data in comparative morphology: applications to higher primate
evolution",
through the AMNH.

Leslie Marcus was one of the world's leading developers of and
prosletyzers
for geometric morphometrics, the statistical analysis of biological
shape
using three dimensional coordinate data. His 1993 paper with James
Rohlf,
"A revolution in morphometrics" (TREE 8:129-132) briefly set out the
basics
of this approach to a wide audience. Les co-organized and co-edited
the
resulting symposium volumes for three workshop/symposia on
morphometrics
during the 1990s, especially a major one in 1993, sponsored by NATO,
in
Italy. He was an author on over 80 publications, with several more
still
being completed.

Leslie's basic interest was in the application of statistical methods
to
understanding biological shape and evolution. He was himself a
paleomammalogist, having worked on extinct Australian mammals,
especially
from Bingara, and the fossils of the La Brea Tar Pits. He was a
Research
Associate at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which
oversees the La Brea site, since 1966. He worked with a wide variety
of
colleagues on paleontological and neozoological problems including
corals,
sharks, birds, rodents, insectivores, artiodactyls, primates and all
mammals. He also had interests in the development of multivariate
statitical methods and their application to geological as well as
biological problems; database management, especially as related to
museum
catalog systems; collection of data via microcomputer-linked devices;
computer graphics; and the recognition of natural selection in natural
populations, living and fossil.

In the late 1990s, he and Eric Delson developed the NYCEP
Morphometrics
Group, based at the AMNH. Here, Leslie and David Reddy trained many of
the
graduate students in the New York Consortium in Evolutionary
Primatology in
the use of these methods, leading to a number of dissertation projects
and
publications, many still in progress. He also worked with a wide range
of
AMNH Curators, Research Associates and other researchers.

Leslie was perhaps best known for his zeal in helping colleagues to
understand and apply the statistical techniques which he knew so well.
More
than almost any other mathematical biologist, he understood both halves
of
the equation: the biological problem and the mathematical solution. He
had
innumerable friends around the world (including those from Brazil,
Mongolia, and across Europe and the USA) who came to him for aid and
became
colleagues, and in turn friends. Leslie was fascinated by
problem-solving
and ways in which he could introduce and inculcate his new colleagues
to
newly developed methods in multivariate statistics, computerized data
collection and geometric morphometrics. His generosity, openness and
desire
to improve the work of his colleagues remain legendary.

Leslie Marcus was born on October 22, 1930, in Los Angeles. He was
graduated from the University of California with a B.A. in
Paleontology
(1951), an M.A. in Statistics (1959) and a Ph. D. in Paleontology
(1962),
having interrupted his schooling for military service after college.
He
taught statistics and biology at Kansas State University and the
University
of Kansas in the 1960s before joining Queens College. He is survived by
his
wife Therese (Terry) Wojtowicz, his brother Stanley (of Los Angeles)
and
his daughter Suzy Smith, from a previous marriage.

A memorial service will be held at 2:30 P.M., Sunday March 3, at the
Plaza
Jewish Community Center, 630 Amsterdam Avenue  (90-91 street;
212-769-4400). Those wishing to make a short statement should contact
Eric
Delson (212-769-5992; delson@amnh.org) by Friday March 1. A web page in
his
memory can be found at http://research.amnh.org/nycep/marcus.html

Eric Delson <eedlc@cunyvm.cuny.edu>

Forwarded by

Richard W. Thorington, Jr.
Division of Mammals
Smithsonian Institution
PO Box 37012
NMNH Room 390, MRC 108
Washington, DC 20013-7012
Fax: 202-786-2979
Phone:202-357-2150
Thorington.Richard@NMNH.SI.EDU
 

James Mahaffy (mahaffy@dordt.edu)        Phone: 712 722-6279
Biology Department                                     FAX :  712
722-1198
Dordt College, Sioux Center IA 51250