Professor Reiss's career as a micropaleontologist and geologist spans more than forty years and includes a long and distinguished career in government service and academia. While we honor him for his many and important contributions to the morphology, systematics, biostratigraphy, ecology, and paleoecology of foraminifera, we are also pleased to recognize his research accomplishments in geology and oceanography and his excellence as a teacher and advisor.

His love of science began as a student at the University of Czernowitz, Bukovina, then part of Rumania, where he studied biology and medical sciences. War and turmoil interrupted his studies and he spent much of World War II interned in Nazi labor camps. Following the war, he fled west to avoid Soviet occupation and eventually came to administer a health department for displaced persons under the American Forces in Munich, Germany. In 1949 he immigrated to Israel. There he once again returned to natural science and became a scientific assistant in the Geology Department at Hebrew University while he took up studies toward a degree in Geology and Paleontology.

In 1950, largely in response to expanded ground water exploration, the need arose to establish a micropaleontology and stratigraphy laboratory in the Israel Geological Survey. This task fell to Reiss, who, with his expertise in microfossils, especially foraminifera, set about deciphering the subsurface stratigraphy of Israel. In the Survey Reiss rose to become chief micropaleontologist and Director of the Paleontology Division. In 1966, after serving for many years as an external lecturer at Hebrew University, he left the Survey to join the University as a Senior Lecturer. A year later he was appointed Associate Professor and, in 1971, Professor. He retired in 1987 but continues as Professor Emeritus.

Reiss's interest in his early days with the Geological Survey were in stratigraphic micropaleontology, often related to his subsurface stratigraphic investigations. His first paper (1952) dealt with smaller foraminifera of the Upper Cretaceous and Lower Tertiary of Israel, a study which revised earlier age assessments and correctly called attention to the Tethyan affinities of the faunas. The paper includes a pioneering use of planktonic foraminifera for age determinations and describes, for the first time, a "globigerina"-zone without Globotruncana or Globorotalia at the base of the "Dano-Paleocene" sequence. Numerous stratigraphic papers followed, including a classic study of Bolivinoides lineages (1954), the taxonomic and biostratigraphic significance of wall textures in planktonic foraminifera (1955), and a summary of the Senonian geology of Israel (1962).

Between 1958 and 1966 Reiss devoted his attention to the stratigraphy and microfacies of the Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous of Israel. A number of major publications resulted, among them an atlas of Jurassic microfacies (with B. Derin) and one on subsurface Lower Cretaceous microfacies (with P. Grader). As a byproduct of this research, Reiss clarified the systematic position of the assumed pteropod Hensonella as the dasyclad Salpingoporella and the nature of so-called "calcite-eyes" in imperforate-agglutinated larger foraminifera as poriferan rhaxes. Studies of subsurface geology continued into the 1970's, carried out partly in collaboration with G. Gvirtzman and B. Derin, and focused on the Neogene. These papers emphasized planktonic foraminiferal biostratigraphy.

Collaborative studies with Fritz Brotzen (1954-1955) and Manfred Reichel and an examination of A. H. Smout's collections in the British Museum piqued Reiss's interest in foraminiferal wall architecture and structure, at first as a practical means of identifying foraminifera in random thin-sections for stratigraphic purposes and later on as taxonomic features for classification. His interest grew rapidly and between 1957 and 1972 resulted in numerous papers on the internal features and wall structure of various genera, especially rotaliids, other "rotaliform" taxa, and planktonic genera based mainly on light microscopy of dissected specimens and oriented thin sections. Many of these studies were made in collaboration with his wife, P. Merling. With the development of scanning electron microscopy, Reiss expanded his analyses with the use of electron photornicrographs of oriented half sections and dissected specimens, many made in joint efforts with H. Jorgen Hansen and N. Schneidermann. Reiss brought the results of these studies together in a comprehensive paper on the reclassification of perforate foraminifera, which was accepted "summa cum laude" in 1962 as his doctoral dissertation at the Hebrew University. His results formed the basis for many taxonomic works at the time, including the revised classification of Foraminiferida used by Helen Tappan and Alfred Loeblich in the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology (1964).

During much of the past two decades, Reiss has directed his efforts towards foraminiferal ecology and paleoecology. In his 1962 paper summarizing the geological history of the Senonian, he emphasized the significance of low diversity and high abundance of buliminid assemblages in phosphorite deposits as indicators of low-oxygen conditions. Recently he has returned to unraveling the paleoenvironments of phosphorites, directing a multidisciplinary study of Cretaceous chalks, cherts, and phosphorites, which examines the chemical, biotic, and sedimentological aspects of these interesting and valuable deposits. He attributes the apatite pelloids to endobenthic buliminid tests, which, under anoxic conditions, act as a calcite substrate for phosphate-rich sheaths of filamentous sulphur-reducing bacteria.

In 1968 he initiated a foraminiferal study of the Gulf of Aqaba which, over time, developed into a largescale, multidisciplinary oceanographic-ecological project involving more than 60 scientists and students from Israel, Denmark, Holland, Germany, France, Switzerland, and the United States. From the beginning he was not only a major contributor but the adroit leader, coordinator, and sometimes diplomat, who directed a major oceanographic survey and published with his many collaborators on the circulation, nutrients, primary productivity, and biomass of the gulf. A series of important co-authored contributions were published on the planktonic and benthic forarninifera (with E. Halicz, M. Zweig, and L. Perelis), larger foraminifera, pteropods (with A. Almogi) and coccolithophorids (with A. Winter), and a comprehensive summary, coauthored with Lucas Hottinger, was presented in their book "The Gulf of Aqaba- Ecological Micropaleontology." These studies demonstrate the importance of light intensities and nutrient patterns on biotic distributions in the low-fertility Gulf of Aqaba. With their understanding of the modem gulf as background, Reiss and his contributors undertook a study of the late Quaternary paleoenvironmental history of the gulf and Red Sea based on deep-sea cores recovered by the Woods Hole oceanographic ship, Atlantis II. The results of the modem and Quaternary studies are a classic case history and a geological model for oligotrophic subtropical seas.

Laboratory experiments carried out separately on the larger foraminifer Amphistegina (with A. Zmiri) and field and laboratory investigations with L. Hottinger, H. J. Hansen, S. Leutenegger, and J. Lee established the influence of endosymbionts and light penetration on foraminiferal distribution patterns. Additional biometric and laboratory experiments by C. Drooger, A. Larsen, W. Fermont, and E. Thomas at the University of Utrecht, proved the significance of light and symbiosis on foraminiferal shell shape. A book on the results obtained from the ecological investigations of larger foraminifera was published in 1977, co-authored by Reiss and his colleagues at Utrecht.

Although now formally retired, Reiss continues to pursue his research full time. Together with L. Hottinger and E. Halicz, he is developing a book on the living foraminifera in the Gulf of Aqaba, with special emphasis on the functional morphology and significance of test features. And, his long-time research in Senonian stratigraphy and micropaleontology continues unabated.

An exceptionally accomplished researcher, Reiss is also an extraordinary teacher and advisor, who has won the respect and deep admiration of students and colleagues alike. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Lecturer Award of the Faculty of Sciences at Hebrew University. Over the years he supervised numerous graduate students, many of whom have themselves become well-known and respected scientists. At the University, he served as the chairman of studies in geology and oceanography, as the Head of the Department of Geology and Director of the Institute of Earth Sciences, as Director of the H. Steinitz Marine Biology Laboratory in Elat, as well as on many faculty and university committees. He is chairman of the board of the G. Meerbaum Foundation for Oceanography.

Reiss has served his profession as chairman of the Israel Academy of Sciences national committees for the International Union of Geological Societies, Scientific Committee for Ocean Research, and lately, the International Geological Biostratigraphy Program as well as serving on numerous international committees, including the Congress on Mediterranean Neogene Stratigraphy and the International Stratigraphic Commission. In 1959 he was a United Nations consultant to the Turkish National Petroleum Company.

Reiss is the former Vice President and President of the Israel Geological Society and the Society's recipient of the R. Freund Award for Scientific Achievement. In 1983 he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Arts.

The Board of Directors of the Cushman Foundation for Foraminiferal Research is proud to give recognition to Professor Dr. Zeev Reiss for his fundamental contributions to the study of foraminifera and for his extraordinary achievements as a teacher and scientist by awarding him the 1989 Joseph A. Cushman Award for Excellence in Foraminiferal Research.

ROBERT G. DOUGLAS

Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics
University of Southern California

Journal of Foraminiferal Research, v. 20, no. 3, p. 181-183, July 1990