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Marine Turtle Newsletter 67:12-13, © 1994

Leo Brongersma--an Appreciation

Peter C. H. Pritchard
Florida Audubon Society, 460 Hwy 436, Casselberry, Florida 32707 USA

Editor's Note: An expanded tribute will be published in Chelonian Conservation and Biology, 1995, 2(1).

Leo Daniël Brongersma, the Dean of European marine turtle biologists, was born in Bloemendaal, the Netherlands, on 17 May 1907. He died on 24 July 1994 in Leiden, his home during both his professional life and his retirement, just a few miles from his birthplace. A quintessential Dutchman, he liked to consider himself a citizen of Friesland, a linguistically distinct province in the far north of the Netherlands. He was a man of dignity and stature, a maintainer of standards, who reminded us of the good things of the past, in an increasingly informal and, some would say, slipshod world. He loved to study the history of things, to celebrate distinguished forebears in science and administration, and to unearth fragments of archival information that captured the spirit of past times.

Brongersma's retirement years were long, and his name may not be as well known to younger marine turtle students as it should be. To those not closely familiar with his many literary contributions, he is perhaps best known for his 1972 "European Atlantic Turtles" (Zool. Verh. Rijksmus. Nat. Hist. Leiden, 121(2):1-318). He served as Director of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlicke Historie for many years, until he reached the mandatory retirement age of 65 in 1972. He then served for four years as acting director of the Rijksmuseum van Geologie en Mineralogie, and had many honorific titles and decorations, including Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw, Officier in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau, and Professor Extraordinarius in systematic zoology at the Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden. He was also a Member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.

Leo's life was long, distinguished, and productive. And it was happy, thanks in no small part to his remarkable and devoted wife Margaretha Brongersma-Sanders, a fellow biologist who won her doctorate just one hour before Leo did, on 19 September 1934. They were married the following month and lived happily ever after, enjoying almost 60 years of married life. We extend condolences to Margaretha, and to their son and daughter and their families. It is a cliché, perhaps, but in Leo's case it is true: they don't make 'em like that any more. He was truly a Professor Extraordinarius.