In Memoriam Tom Berman

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Research (IOLR), prominent member of the Aquatic Microbial Ecology community, and member of the editorial board of this journal.Tom died from a fall when hiking in the Galapagos Islands, one of his life-long dream trips.Tom was a paradigmatic member of our community, having published extensively on phytoplankton, protozoans and bacteria, in both freshwater and marine ecosystems.Tom's examples showed that microbial ecological principles are general to all aquatic systems.Tom was born on February 25, 1934 in Hronov, former Czechoslovakia.In June 1939, his parents put him on one of the special Kindertransport trains from Prague to London that saved 668 Czech children from certain death by the Nazis.Tom grew up in Scotland, but moved to the USA for his bachelor's degree at Rutgers University, followed by a PhD in Microbiology at MIT.Tom then moved to Kibbutz Amiad in Upper Galilee, Israel, and was responsible for setting up the Kinneret Lab.As its first director (1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971), Tom participated in designing the basic approach that has been so successful, involving extensive and persistent lake monitoring and an integrated approach to limnological re search.He was again director between 1986 and his retirement in 1999, and initiated expansion of the Kinneret Lab to also deal with applied aspects of lake management.The great majority of Tom's research revolved around uncovering the role of phytoplankton and bacteria in organic matter and inorganic nutrient cycling.He thus contributed to the establishment of aquatic microbial ecology as a prospering discipline.Tom did not have a scientific pet model organism but he did have a pet model ecosystem: Lake Kinneret.To understand this ecosystem he early on delved into the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles.From the early 1970s, and throughout his scientific career, Tom explored the dynamics of phytoplankton