News

Dear members,

Please visit the tribute video to Jeremy McNeil, produced by Walter S. Leal.

A transcription of the tribute follows:

Jeremy McNeil was born on November 20^th, 1944 in Tunbridge, England. The following year his family moved to Newfoundland, Canada. Jeremy returned to England for high school and worked for two years as a hospital orderly and wine merchant in London. He returned to Canada for his undergraduate studies at the University of Western Ontario, receiving a BSC in Honours Zoology in 1969. He received a PhD in Entomology and Ecology from the North Carolina State University in 1972. Soon after, he accepted a tenure track position at Laval University where he rose academically to Associate Professor in 1977 and Full Professor in 1982. After three decades at Laval he left for a Humboldt fellowship at Hamburg University where he worked with the legendary chemical ecologist Wittko Francke. Upon returning to Canada he accepted a full professorship with the University of Western Ontario, his Alma Mater, where he remained until his passing on July 18^th, 2024.

Jeremy was one of the pillars of the International Society of Chemical Ecology (ISCE). He regularly attended ISCE annual meetings. Ironically he passed on the day of the latest meeting in Prague, the only annual meeting he missed in recent years. Jeremy was elected fellow of the Entomological Society of Canada in 1987, the Royal Society of Canada in 1999 and the Entomological Society of America in 2015. He was made an honorary fellow of the Royal Entomological Society in 2019. He received the ISCE silver medal in 2004 and was elected a corresponding member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences in 2018. Jeremy was awarded the Fry Medal from the Canadian Society of Zoologists in 2008, the gold medal from the Entomological Society of Canada in 1987. He was made a distinguished University Professor in 2014, and received the Helmuth Award in 2020 from the University of Western Ontario, and outstanding alumnus in 2011 from NC State, among many other accolades. Jeremy was president of ISCE in 1994, the Entomological Society of Canada in 1989, the Entomological Society of Quebec in 1978 and the Entomological Society of Ontario in 2013. He served as the International Secretary of the Royal Society of Canada from 2010-2017 and then as its president, 2019-2022. He created and served as co-chair, 2016 2022, of the Inter-American Network of Academies of Science.

Jeremy is known as one of the most, if not the most, engaging speakers in chemical ecology circles. His lectures delivered while wearing entomology themed t-shirts were thought-provoking, entertaining and stimulating, to say the least. As I stated on Twitter on the day of his passing, Jeremy is irreplaceable he was one of a kind. May Berenbaum described him as “a leader in thought, word and deed”. Jeremy received many accolades for actively engaging in public awareness of science including the Award for Science Promotion from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada 2016.

“Teaching small children, you know, getting them interested in science showing why it’s exciting but also why it’s important to them, and as I as I said to you earlier, one of the things I think is extremely important with the younger children is to make sure they understand that this is, science isn’t gender biased. Anybody can do science if they have the ability to do it and it shouldn’t be a question of whether you’re a boy or a girl, and the sooner we get that in the schools and get people to understand is, I mean, you know I’m in most of the academies in the Americas for example when you look at the number of women versus men it’s very gender biased and it isn’t towards women, in part because one only gets there when one is quite old and in the old days there were fewer people, fewer women in science, because they were told, oh, no, that’s not for you, and we need to get rid of that. And we need to get the best minds.” – Jeremy McNeil

His behavioral and chemical ecology research advanced our understanding of chemical cues, semiochemicals, mediating plant insect and host parasitoid interactions as well as the reproductive strategies of insects that migrate in response to predictable or unpredictable habitat changes. His research papers have been cited more than 8,000 times and have an H-index of 53. Last year alone, he produced five peer-reviewed articles. His legacy will be carried on by more than 60 graduate students and post-doctoral scholars he supervised. He also inspired the next generation of chemical ecologists. The world was a better place with Jeremy on it.

– By Walter S. Leal