Papers of George Richard Harbison

George Richard Harbison began his Columbia College career as an English Major, ending up with a History degree, followed by his PhD in Biochemistry at Florida State. He came to Woods Hole as a postdoc to pursue the biochemistry, but fell in love with biological oceanography on his first research cruise.

Richard began his career at WHOI in 1971 as a postdoc fellow in the Biology Department. In 1972, he was promoted to assistant scientist. In 1976, he was promoted to associate scientist. He obtained tenure in 1979. In 1986, he was promoted to senior scientist and retired in 2001. In 2006, he returned as a scientist emeritus.

Richard studied gelatinous zooplankton, with a focus on the group Ctenophora. He loved to figure out their associations with other creatures, and had a special passion for working in the open ocean, deep sea, Arctic, and Antarctic regions. He was particularly proud to collaborate with a great group of friends whose diverse interests (fish, siphonophores, salps, jellyfish, pteropods, etc!) led to learning a great deal about the world’s oceans, largely using SCUBA, submersible, and remotely operated vehicles. Together, they discovered many new associations among creatures, and many creatures which were new to science.