Daniel Goodman was born on May 20, 1945, and passed away on November 14, 2012. He was an American professor who focused on the fields of ecology, population biology, and Bayesian statistics. He started and led the Environmental Statistics Group in the Department of Ecology at Montana State University.
Biography
Goodman was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. When he was a child, he moved with his family to Tel Aviv, Israel, where he completed high school and served in the military. He later returned to the United States to study at Ohio State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology in 1966 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Zoology in 1972. Goodman worked as a research associate at Cornell University from 1972 to 1974. He taught at Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1975 to 1983 and at Montana State University from 1981 to 2012. He died at the age of 67 due to complications from surgery to remove a spinal tumor. He is survived by his wife, Diane Brawner, and his daughter, Rollie Goodman.
Work
Academically, Goodman is best known for his early work on how diversity and stability relate in ecosystems and his research on life history theory. He used evidence from more than 200 studies to challenge the popular idea that biological diversity increases ecological stability. His research on reproductive trade-offs showed that the true cost of reproduction in animals that reproduce multiple times is influenced not only by changes in future survival chances but also by changes in future ability to reproduce. This combined effect can be measured as a change in reproductive value. Later in his career, Goodman focused on practical issues in conservation biology and environmental science. He is recognized for using mathematical and statistical models to study how human activities affect marine mammals and Pacific salmon. In one of his most widely cited works, he demonstrated the importance of random events related to births and deaths in determining the likelihood of a population becoming extinct. Goodman participated in many government committees and groups focused on conservation and environmental protection. The "Daniel Goodman Memorial Symposium" took place on March 20–21, 2014, at the Museum of the Rockies, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana. The symposium’s topic, "Decision-making under uncertainty: risk assessment and the best available science," honored his contributions to risk assessment in environmental science.
Selected bibliography
- Goodman, D. (1974). "Natural selection and a cost-ceiling on reproductive effort." American Naturalist, 108:247-268.
- Goodman, D. (1975). "The theory of diversity-stability relationships in ecology." Quarterly Review Biology, 50:237-266.
- Goodman, D. (1979). "Regulating reproductive effort in a changing environment." American Naturalist, 119:735-748.
- Goodman, D. (1982). "Optimal life histories, optimal notation, and the value of reproductive value." American Naturalist, 119:803-823.
- Goodman, D. (1984). "Risk spreading as an adaptive strategy in iteroparous life histories." Theoretical Population Biology, 25(1):1-20.
- Goodman, D. (1987). "The demography of chance extinction." Viable populations for conservation, 11-34.
- Goodman, D. (2004). "Taking the prior seriously: Bayesian analysis without subjective probability." The Nature of Scientific Evidence, 379-409.
Committee Membership
- Board of Trustees, The Institute of Ecology 1979–82
- Condor Advisory Committee, California Fish & Game Commission 1981–85
- Committee of Scientific Advisors, U.S. Marine Mammal Commission 1985–89
- Scientific Committee, International Whaling Commission 1986–88
- Science Advisory Board, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- National Research Council of the National Academies