AN ECOLOGIST for more than forty
years, Mike Rosenzweig remembers having to explain his calling to his puzzled family. Most of them thought ecology was a branch of internal medicine!

Despite their acute disappointment, Rosenzweig persevered and participated in some of the most basic ecological research of the twentieth century. He has worked with mathematical theories of predation dynamics, foraging choice and species diversity. He opened the era of modern ecological research on desert animals, and continues this work to this very day. And he discovered the way the number of species at the grand scale depends on the amount of area. The latter discovery supplies the scientific basis for reconciliation ecology.

While writing the influential graduate textbook, Species Diversity in Space and Time (Cambridge University Press, 1995), Rosenzweig became aware of the long-term futility of our current set-aside strategy to save species. His horror led to the discovery of reconciliation ecology and this book.

Rosenzweig is married to the former Carole Ruth Citron (his wife of over 40 years). They have three children, all married to (or at least seriously involved with) lovely partners. They also have almost their fair share of beautiful and brilliant grandchildren.

Known as an innovator, Rosenzweig founded the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona in 1975, and was its first head. In 1987 he founded the scientific journal Evolutionary Ecology. In 1998, when prices for journals began to rise so high that many university libraries could no longer afford their subscriptions, he organized his board of editors and founded a competitor, Evolutionary Ecology Research. EER, of which he is publisher and editor-in-chief, reaches millions of scientists and their students world-wide.