Oct. 9, 2002--The following tribute was presented by Douglas Tallamy, professor of entomology and applied ecology, on Oct. 7 at the General Faculty Meeting.

Just over two years after becoming symptomatic with cancer, Thomas K. Wood died quietly in his sleep on Sept. 7. He was 60 years old and an active member of the Department of Entomology and Applied Ecology in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resouces.

Tom Wood was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and completed a double major in chemistry and biology at Wilmington College, also in Ohio. He began to focus his interests while obtaining his Ph.D. in entomology at Cornell University.

Shortly after joining the faculty at Wilmington College as an assistant professor in 1968, he began his professional career in evolutionary biology using membracid tree hoppers, his life-long passion, as a model system. Within five years, Tom Wood was appointed chair of the biology department at Wilmington College, and achieved full professor in 1977. He left Wilmington in 1979 to join the faculty in entomology and applied ecology at the University of Delaware where he spent 23 years studying the mechanisms by which tree hoppers populations diverge into different species without being geographically isolated. When Tom began his work, such “sympatric speciation” events were almost universally dismissed as evolutionary impossibilities. Eight NSF grants, two USDA grants, one National Geographic Society grant and 45 publications later, Tom Wood not only convinced the scientific community that sympatric speciation was possible, but many evolutionary biologists currently believe it is relatively common. Sympatric speciation in tree hoppers is now a standard feature in evolutionary biology textbooks.

Tom Wood spent the last decade of his career assembling the first phylogenetic tree of the world’s 3,000 tree hopper species based on DNA sequences. He was beloved by his students and will be missed by his colleagues. He leaves behind his wife, Barbara, his sons, Tyler and Brett, three graduate students, an NSF grant and countless memories.

Sept. 20, 2002—Thomas K. Wood, 60, professor of entomology and applied ecology at the University since 1979, died Sept. 7, 2002. A memorial service will be held from 2-4 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 21, in the Gallery of the Perkins Student Center.

A dedicated evolutionary biologist, Dr. Wood received seven National Science Foundation grants over his career. Before joining UD, he taught in the biology department of Wilmington College from 1968-79.

He earned his doctorate from Cornell University in 1968.

Memorial contributions may be made to the University of Delaware, designated for the “Thomas K. Wood Treehopper Research Fund” and mailed to: University of Delaware, 113 Townsend Hall, Newark, DE 19717-1303, Attention: Joseph Bradley.