Acknowledgements
Although there are many who have formulated my outlook on science there are a few who were anchor points. As a young person, at Darlington Grammar School, England I was so very fortunate to receive an education at one of the few schools that provided an advanced geology curriculum. Jack Waltham and the late George Chapman took me under their tutelage and provided not only a direction for my future [palaeontology] but an intense desire to learn more about the taxonomy, classification and systematics of organisms. Endeavors that I learnt later were very basic to understanding humankind’s nature, culture and civilization. Six years after leaving Darlington I finished my Ph. D. in the taxonomy of spores and pre-pollen of Permian plants, at Sheffield University, and began an eventful career, first in the former Soviet Union at Moscow State University, then at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa and finally at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. During my time at LSU I was able to spend just over 2 years working in India, under a Smithsonian Institution Contract at the University of Andhra Pradesh, Visakhapatnam; and, two years working for Texaco Inc., in their New Orleans office. Throughout the past 50 years I have been involved with studies on all continents and over 30 countries.
It was during my first year at Sheffield that Charles Downie introduced me to empirical classification techniques and systematics [the process of actually classifying things]. Charles directed me towards a lifelong investigation of statistical methods of classification. In my second year at Sheffield I came under the influence of Peter Sylvester-Bradley, who remained a friend until his untimely death. Peter Bradley introduced me to theoretical taxonomy and interests in the origin of life and the origin of species, and encouraged me to write my first scientific review papers, as an undergraduate, on those topics [Hart, 1956, 1957]. Shortly afterwards during my Ph. D. studies under Leslie R. Moore I learnt how to apply the empirical taxonomic method to understanding both areal and temporal changes seen in multi-variate populations. This avenue was enlarged later in 1960-61, when, as a British Council Exchange student at Moscow State University under the renowned structural geologist and stratigrapher Alex. A. Bogdarnov I worked with Sophia Naumova, N. N. Luber, and N. Valts. This work was picked up again in 1973, when I returned to the Soviet Union as the Senior Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA and worked with Sergei Meyen on the importance of climate and geographic isolation as factors in global changes of multi-variate populations.
There are many others who directly influenced my growth as a scientist. During my tenure as NATO Fellow, and later Senior Anglo-American Fellow at the Bernard Price Institute of Paleontology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa my colleagues were Raymond Dart the palaeo-anatomist, and, Edna Plumstead the palaeo-botanist, who allowed me to study her extensive collections from Gondwanaland. Over the years I have been privileged to discuss my ideas with, E. S. Barghoorn, who gave me confidence to emigrate to the USA, by asking me to work with him at Harvard [which I never did]; G. G. Simpson who expounded on the geographic distribution of Marsupials for two weeks when we shared a room together in Brazil and with whom I had corresponded on biostatistics since I was an undergraduate; and Robert Potonie, and Hilda Grebe, of Germany who convinced me that all classifications should be empirically based within a strong theoretical taxonomic framework.
No Professor is uninfluenced by his own graduate students and of the many I have been associated with I especially enjoyed the joint learning experiences I had with Dr. Pat Ryan, the late Dr. Tom Stratten, Vice-chancellor Professor Dick Pienaar, Dr. Sylvana DeGasparis and my dear friend A. J. [Tony] Cessford, in South Africa; and Professor Ray Christopher, Reverend Bob Pierce, Dr. Macombe Jervey, Dr. Mark Pasley, Dr. Bill Gregory, Dr. Bill Harrison, Dr. Bill Evans, Dr. John Grace and Anne Lenoir in the United States of America.
For many years I have had regular discussion concerning the evolution of humanity with my close friend Dr. Faith LaGay, a long time editor and currently with the AMA in Chicago and editor of the journal “Medical Reviews”. Faith is a very human specimen of humankind who has moderated some of my more extreme views on humanity. She very kindly sat with me and discussed and edited the second draft of the first two sections of this book, in 2004. For this and for our long friendship I am very grateful.
Any scientist of my generation grew up with the development of computers and I think the inventors of those machines, if not the actual machines, should be recognized. Starting with the old IBM 320 and 370 and those wonderful hollerith cards that taught me how error creeps into things that later become scientific concepts; through my first personal computer, a WICAT using UNIX that instilled in me the idea that from a very small and simple set of commands, a whole universe can be built. An Amiga 1000 followed, which provided me with knowledge of computer graphics long before it was in the mainstream. Zenith PC’s allowed me to explore DOS on twelve machines at once; Teserac which gave me insight into parallel systems, and, finally Silicon Graphics who by inventing the Indigo I and later series of SGI machines led me to a more consolidated world of computing. Most recently, I have discovered the world of the PS3, not for gaming but for its ability to allow parallel-processing on an inexpensive 9-core processing system: the future will indeed be full of fun!
No one who has worked with computers since the 1960’s can avoid being in debt to Bill Gates, who opened up the floodgate to allow numerous useful programs to be developed. Not having to write code any more allowed all scientists to make major strides in the interpretation of data; and, by simply studying how other peoples specific programs worked provided a world view into how machines could be made to think.
I thank Professor Lauri Anderson, Professor Gary Byerly, Professor Jeffery Nunn, and the succession of chairpersons of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at LSU, for their continued support. LSU graphic artists Mary Lee Eggart and Clifford P. Duplechin have supplied artwork, not only for this book but for numerous earlier publications: their friendship during decade’s long association is appreciated. Finally, the valued help of some of my close friends, who read all or part of the manuscript prior to publication, is needed. Most especially I thank Faith LaGay, of the American Medical Association, Chicago; and Bill Ross, Geological Manager of GeoGraphix Inc., Colorado who gave much of time for discussion and reviewing the manuscript. At LSU Professor Barun Sen Gupta, kindly read the first section of this book, and Professor Miles Richardson reviewed my classification of the hominids.