Dick Olson Retires

After 35 years of working with environmental data and the producers of those data, Richard “Dick” Olson has announced his retirement from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Distributed Active Archive Center (ORNL DAAC).

“Although I will miss the interesting and productive interactions with the GPPDI, EMDI, NPP, TCO, GCP, LTER, NCEAS, LTSS, ISLSCP, modeling and other communities,” Olson says, “I’m looking forward to different types of adventures.”

Olson regards the LTER community and, more specifically, the LTER data managers as a “great group,” with special thanks to “all the other data pushers for helping to legitimize data management (and archiving, informatics, etc.), as part of ecosystem science!” Olson says he will retain his current contact information for the immediate future.

The ORNL DAAC will continue to provide access to the various collections of field observations. Please contact Bob Cook, DAAC Scientist (cookrb@ornl.gov, 1-865-574-7329) with questions or suggestions or data needs.

In Memory of Dick Wiegert

It is with great sadness that we report the death Monday, 4 November 2002, of Richard G. Wiegert, after a long illness. He will be greatly missed by his wife, Liz McGhee, his family and his many friends and colleagues throughout the world.

Those who knew Dick will remember him for his enormous intelligence, his great sense of humor, his love of a good story, his insatiable curiosity about how the world around him worked, and his great love of books and learning. We ask all of you who knew Dick to take a few minutes to remember a special conversation, experience, perhaps even an adventure, that you shared with him, and to join us in celebrating his life rather than mourning his death.