H. B. Noel Hynes, internationally renowned freshwater biologist and Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of Waterloo, died peacefully at Manoir Lac Brome in Knowlton, Québec, on March 2nd, at the age of 91. Dr. Hynes was a pioneer in modern stream ecology, considered by many to be the father of the field. His most widely known contributions, The Biology of Polluted Waters (1960) and The Ecology of Running Waters (1971, reprinted in 2001), combined his own work with truly global interpretations of the literature and had immediate and lasting influence on both applied and basic aquatic biology. Similarly, his Elgardo Baldi Memorial Lecture “The Stream and Its Valley” at the Societas Internationalis Limnologiciae meeting in 1974 was a lucid synthesis of ideas about the connections between rivers and their drainage basins that expanded aquatic ecology to the landscape scale and stimulated new lines of research into nutrient cycling, the importance of allochthonous inputs and the effects of land-use on aquatic systems.
Noel published 190 papers, the first in 1940, the last in 2008, including two citation classics and 44 reflecting his lifelong interest in stoneflies. These publications cover topics as diverse as the parasites of sticklebacks and the control of migratory locusts, and are based on work conducted from Australia to the Arctic. They include pioneering work on stream drift and recolonization, the fate of autumn-shed leaves, the estimation of secondary production, groundwater discharge and recharge, and the importance of the hyporheic zone. During the course of his career, he supervised more than 30 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, and advised and mentored countless others, both at Waterloo and internationally. As a supervisor he was encouraging and supportive, offering constructive suggestions and effortlessly transforming paragraphs of students’ tortured prose to a few expressive sentences. His clarity of thought and expression set a very high standard, but he was always open to talk about ideas, new or old. Whether in the lab or beside his backyard pool, conversation with Noel always yielded more information than expected. His casual mentions of ‘that paper by…’ prevented the reinvention of many wheels. His facility with and love of languages were daunting: he was fluent in French and Italian, understood German, and delighted in advising us that Swahili was a very simple language that everyone should know.
He received honorary doctorates from the University of London, the University of New Brunswick and the University of Waterloo. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and received their Centennial Medal in 1967. He also received the Hilary Jolly Award from the Australian Limnological Society (1984) and the inaugural Award of Excellence from the North American Benthological Society (1988). The Canadian Rivers Institute at the University of New Brunswick holds a Hynes Lecture Series, and the North American Benthological Society gives a Hynes Award for New Investigators in his honour. In 1998 Dr. Hynes received the Naumann-Thienemann Medal, the highest award available to an aquatic biologist, by the Societas Internationalis Limnologiciae, “for establishment of the field of lotic limnology as a major, rich and varied discipline, and for wide-ranging contributions that brought innovative research, insight, and synthesis to all aspects of lotic ecosystems for six decades.”
Born in Devizes, England, Noel Hynes exhibited an interest in biology, especially entomology, at a very early age. He graduated in biology from Imperial College (now part of the University of London) in 1938 and obtained a Ph.D. from the University of London in 1941. His thesis research focused on Plecoptera in the English Lake District. After a year in Trinidad, where he was sent by the British Colonial Office to learn about tropical biology, Dr. Hynes joined their locust-control program and worked in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.
In1946, he and his wife Mary returned to England where he took up a university lectureship in Liverpool. At Liverpool University, he established a research program, largely funded through industrial contracts. His reports were not necessarily what the industries wanted to hear, but were too rigorous to be rejected. Dr. Hynes moved with his family to Canada in 1964, as the first full-time Chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Waterloo. While building the Department, he established an active research program and wrote The Ecology of Running Waters. After serving as Chair, he declined higher administrative posts to concentrate on research and teaching. He retired from the university in 1984, but remained active counseling students, serving on editorial boards and advising government agencies for many more years.
Noel loved to share stories of his field adventures in Africa, Australia, North America and Europe. He included many of these, together with sometimes pointed opinions on the world we inhabit and evidence of his love of language, in his autobiography Nunc Dimittis: A Life in the River of Time (2001). His wife, Mary, passed away in 1999. He is survived by his four children, nine grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren.
H. B. Noel Hynes, internationally renowned freshwater biologist and Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of Waterloo, died peacefully at Manoir Lac Brome in Knowlton, Québec, on March 2nd, at the age of 91. Dr. Hynes was a pioneer in modern stream ecology, considered by many to be the father of the field. His most widely known contributions, The Biology of Polluted Waters (1960) and The Ecology of Running Waters (1971, reprinted in 2001), combined his own work with truly global interpretations of the literature and had immediate and lasting influence on both applied and basic aquatic biology. Similarly, his Elgardo Baldi Memorial Lecture “The Stream and Its Valley” at the Societas Internationalis Limnologiciae meeting in 1974 was a lucid synthesis of ideas about the connections between rivers and their drainage basins that expanded aquatic ecology to the landscape scale and stimulated new lines of research into nutrient cycling, the importance of allochthonous inputs and the effects of land-use on aquatic systems.
Noel published 190 papers, the first in 1940, the last in 2008, including two citation classics and 44 reflecting his lifelong interest in stoneflies. These publications cover topics as diverse as the parasites of sticklebacks and the control of migratory locusts, and are based on work conducted from Australia to the Arctic. They include pioneering work on stream drift and recolonization, the fate of autumn-shed leaves, the estimation of secondary production, groundwater discharge and recharge, and the importance of the hyporheic zone. During the course of his career, he supervised more than 30 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, and advised and mentored countless others, both at Waterloo and internationally. As a supervisor he was encouraging and supportive, offering constructive suggestions and effortlessly transforming paragraphs of students’ tortured prose to a few expressive sentences. His clarity of thought and expression set a very high standard, but he was always open to talk about ideas, new or old. Whether in the lab or beside his backyard pool, conversation with Noel always yielded more information than expected. His casual mentions of ‘that paper by…’ prevented the reinvention of many wheels. His facility with and love of languages were daunting: he was fluent in French and Italian, understood German, and delighted in advising us that Swahili was a very simple language that everyone should know.
He received honorary doctorates from the University of London, the University of New Brunswick and the University of Waterloo. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and received their Centennial Medal in 1967. He also received the Hilary Jolly Award from the Australian Limnological Society (1984) and the inaugural Award of Excellence from the North American Benthological Society (1988). The Canadian Rivers Institute at the University of New Brunswick holds a Hynes Lecture Series, and the North American Benthological Society gives a Hynes Award for New Investigators in his honour. In 1998 Dr. Hynes received the Naumann-Thienemann Medal, the highest award available to an aquatic biologist, by the Societas Internationalis Limnologiciae, “for establishment of the field of lotic limnology as a major, rich and varied discipline, and for wide-ranging contributions that brought innovative research, insight, and synthesis to all aspects of lotic ecosystems for six decades.”
Born in Devizes, England, Noel Hynes exhibited an interest in biology, especially entomology, at a very early age. He graduated in biology from Imperial College (now part of the University of London) in 1938 and obtained a Ph.D. from the University of London in 1941. His thesis research focused on Plecoptera in the English Lake District. After a year in Trinidad, where he was sent by the British Colonial Office to learn about tropical biology, Dr. Hynes joined their locust-control program and worked in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia.
In1946, he and his wife Mary returned to England where he took up a university lectureship in Liverpool. At Liverpool University, he established a research program, largely funded through industrial contracts. His reports were not necessarily what the industries wanted to hear, but were too rigorous to be rejected. Dr. Hynes moved with his family to Canada in 1964, as the first full-time Chair of the Department of Biology at the University of Waterloo. While building the Department, he established an active research program and wrote The Ecology of Running Waters. After serving as Chair, he declined higher administrative posts to concentrate on research and teaching. He retired from the university in 1984, but remained active counseling students, serving on editorial boards and advising government agencies for many more years.
Noel loved to share stories of his field adventures in Africa, Australia, North America and Europe. He included many of these, together with sometimes pointed opinions on the world we inhabit and evidence of his love of language, in his autobiography Nunc Dimittis: A Life in the River of Time (2001). His wife, Mary, passed away in 1999. He is survived by his four children, nine grandchildren and eleven great grandchildren.
