THERE is a hole in my chest where my heart used to be, and a chasm in tropical biology the size of the Panama Canal. Stan Rand died on November 14, 2005, and we are all the worse off for it, personally and professionally.
Dr. Austin Stanley Rand, Stan to all who knew him, was born on September 29, 1932. Perhaps destiny dealt him no choice but greatness in biology, as his father Austin was already a famous ornithologist at Stan's birth. Stan was never far from field biology or museums when he grew up–he published his first paper when he was 12! Stan began his graduate studies with Dr. Ernest Williams at Harvard, where he became an early member of that awesome lineage of students of Anolis biology under Williams' tutelage. He received his Ph.D. in 1961 and remained at Harvard on a postdoc for one year, which included...
