George D. Grice papers

George D. Grice, Jr., was born October 9, 1929 in Charleston, South Carolina. He received a B.S. degree in biology from Clemson College in 1950, a M.A. degree in biology from Florida State University in 1953, and Ph.D. in biology from Florida State University in 1957. He worked as a fishery biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Juneau, Alaska, from 1957 to 1958, then spent a year as a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.

George Grice joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution staff in July 1959 as a research associate in marine zoology in the Biology Department. He bore the nickname "Grits", and he was known to his friends for many years by that name. In 1963 he was promoted to Associate Scientist, and in June 1973 was named a Senior Scientist. He served as Chair of the Biology Department from 1974 to 1981, when he was named Associate Director for Scientific Operations, with responsibility for all the facilities of the Institution. During this time he played a major role in planning for the nation's new fleet of research vessels, now tangible in the Research Vessel Atlantis and its sister ships.

During the 1970s, he was an initiator, leader and active investigator in the multi-national program Controlled Ecosystem Polution Experiment (CEPEX) that used large specialized enclosures, called mesocosms, to study plankton communities under controlled conditions. The results were published in a 1982 book co-authored with Mike Reeve called Marine Mesocosms.

His scientific research, ultimately conducted in all of the world's oceans, focused on the taxonomy and biology of copepods, a large group of small crustaceans important in oceanic food webs. At WHOI he soon became known for his good humor and hard work. His papers on the abundance, seasonal occurrence, and distribution of zooplankton between Long Island and Bermuda became a standard resource for biological oceanographers working in the Northwest Atlantic. He published more than 65 substantial scientific papers throughout his scientific career. After serving as Associate Director for Scientific Operations until February 1991, he retired later in that year.

George Grice died March 11, 2001, in Charleston, SC.