Memories of Cas Jeekel, friend, colleague, and role model

Nearly everyone has experienced an event that exerted a profound influence on some aspect of their life; often the full impact of that milestone is not fully appreciated until much later through the filter of retrospection. The first such event that established the course of my own scientific career occurred in November of 1946, when, searching for some group of animals to investigate, I attempted to identify some julid millipeds and discovered that the only comprehensive resource on North American species was published in 1893. The second came in the form of a letter dated 20 August 1949 from a certain C. A.W. Jeekel at the Amsterdam Zoological Museum, introducing himself as a beginning student of myriapods, and inquiring about the availability of certain type specimens in the U.S. National Museum. Thus began an exchange of ideas and information that evolved into a personal friendship that endured for more than 60 years, and resulted in reshaping my approach to taxonomy. Up to that point in time, much of the published work on Diplopoda consisted of opportunistic descriptions of new taxa with scant attention to any form of synthesis. I was still under the malign influence of R.V. Chamberlin, an exemplar of minimal taxonomy, and my new friend in Holland was still publishing isolated descriptions, albeit with substantial amplification of his actions. However, my conversion to a different approach was catalyzed by his two 1951 papers about Tectoporus and Sphaeropoeus which showed that useful progress could be made by combining descriptions of new taxa with analysis of relevant published information. Maybe a piecemeal measure, but certainly an improvement and guide for the future work which I determined to adopt. ZooKeys 156: 67–70 (2011)