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Bernhard Statzner 1948-2020
 With the recent death of Bernhard Statzner (a lifetime member of the FBA), the world of freshwater ecology has lost one of its most original thinkers of the last 50 years. His love was for rivers and he understood them as both physical and biological systems much better than most of us. He combined an appreciation of physics and the quantitative approach of the hydraulic engineer along with an eye for the wonderful details of natural history – an overall set of skills that was close to unique. Apart from his science he was a larger-than-life character – inspiring (and giving) great loyalty in many, along with something approaching trepidation in others. He had little time for the new ‘managerial’ style of Universities and research organisations and he took great delight in exposing the shortcomings of targets, citation rankings and the rest. To many young scientists he was a wonderful mentor - patient, helpful and kindly – but determination and the willingness to work hard, above all, were his prior requirements.
His background was unusual. He would describe himself as a working-class boy from Kiel (northern Germany) and remained a proud Schleswig-Holsteiner. He came from a parental generation and a place which had known the devastation of war and the substantial loss of traditional heavy industry and a proud record of ship-building. He said himself he struggled at school but managed to get into the University of Kiel in 1970, studying Biology, Chemistry and Physics, when he could drop subjects he saw as less relevant to him – and he flourished. In 1972 he did project work in what is now Zaire, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, graduating from Kiel in 1973. He began work for his PhD on North German streams, but interrupted that to become a consultant for the World Health Organisation in the Ivory Coast (1976-78) to study the wider effects of spraying rivers against the blackfly larvae – the vectors of ‘river blindness’ – he also learned French in that Francophone part of Africa. Returning to Kiel he was awarded his PhD in 1979, immediately taking up an Assistant Professorship at the University of Karlsruhe. He taught zoology, general and stream ecology and stream restoration. He obtained his habilitation – a second thesis (rather similar to a DSc in the UK, but a necessary requirement for an academic career in Germany) at Karlsruhe in 1987 – briefly becoming a Full Professor in the Engineering Department before going into industry for three years as a senior manager of a large ecological restoration project in an industrial area.
At this point he had arguably the biggest international profile of any young German stream ecologist but, to the long-lasting regret of many in his home country, he did not get the academic job he wanted in Germany and moved to France. He became a Research Director of CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) embedded in a river ecology working group at the University of Lyon. There he found probably more individual river scientists than in any other centre in the world, many of them distinguished but with the whole arguably adding up to less than its individual parts. His move to Lyon was facilitated by two highly influential French scientists – Christian Lévêque and Louis Roux - who saw in Statzner someone who could galvanise the lab. and raise its international profile. Many factors have led to the great resurgence in French river ecology over the last 30 years, but Statzner’s vision, determination and energy was certainly one of them. He managed to convince the various research groups at Lyon to come together and to use their goldmine of information on the River Rhône to mount an ambitious test of the habitat templet concept. He was aided by extremely able statisticians who could help the biologists to collate and analyse their data in novel ways. A highly cited Special Issue of Freshwater Biology was an output, and this work led on to a flowering of research on species traits as applied, for instance, to biomonitoring and the ability to distinguish different stressors.
He personally made his mark in river research in many ways – and in several cases his contributions were seminal in the field. With a small group of other enthusiasts, he was a founder of ‘hydraulic river ecology’, greatly enhancing our knowledge of the intimacies of flow and benthic invertebrates and adopting the technique of Laser Doppler Anemometry to visualize flow around insects and to understand their adaptations. This work on the flow also contributed to a growth of interest in disturbance in stream ecology – and particularly disturbance from fluctuations in flow. He published many pioneering papers on west African blackflies and West African streams more generally. In France, he pioneered work on the bioturbation of sediments in streams – widening the discussion of organisms as ‘ecosystem engineers’. He also did influential work on the economics of stream restoration, improvements of in water quality and ecosystem services. Above all else, he loved to study natural history – and in particular that of his beloved caddis flies, and he did fascinating work on their behaviour and evolution. Statzner published a lot, but more than that he did everything with great care, thoroughness and rigour – his work can be trusted. He certainly ‘ruffled some feathers’ in his professional life – perhaps sometimes unnecessarily – but he was an innovative scientist, far-sighted and brave. Those of us who count him as a friend – and there are many – will miss him enormously. He was free of any kind of vanity, loved life and he often said that the best side of science was the international camaraderie that it brought. Bernhard died on 12th July this year – after a long illness borne with courage. He is survived by his wife Monika – to whom our sincere condolences go.
Alan Hildrew
London, August 2020.
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