Determination and enthusiasm: Richard Norris Wolfenden (1854–1926), his Plankton studies and other things oceanographical

Abstract

Richard Norris Wolfenden was a significant independent force in post-Challenger British oceanography. After a career in medicine, Wolfenden devoted himself to an intense decade of exploration in the North Atlantic on his yachts the Walwin and the Silver Belle, in cooperation with expanding international studies. He was among the first to advocate relatively small-scale but periodic investigations of fixed sites. Wolfenden was a founder of the Challenger Society (1903) and a member of the council of the Marine Biological Association. Pelagic copepods became Wolfenden's particular interest. Among his 12 papers and monographs were the two parts of the Plankton studies (1905–1906), the rarest modern copepodological publications. Taxonomic problems caused by a revision of the first part are discussed, and an attempt was made to locate the “half dozen” original sets of the Plankton studies. Wolfenden left England in 1910 and spent his last years in Ontario.