Harvard Paleobotanist Dead; Discoverer of Oldest Organism

Fisher Professor of Natural History Eiso S. Barghoorn Jr. considered by his colleagues to have built an international reputation for Harvard's Department of Paleontology, died last Friday at age 68 of natural causes.

Barghoorn discovered the oldest known evidence of life on earth-3.4 billion-year-old microorganisms--while doing research in South Africa from 1965 to 1967.

Until that discovery, the earliest evidence of a living organism was more than two-billion-year-old fossils of primitive plants, which Barghoorn also discovered with Dr. Stanley Tyler of the University of Wisconsin during studies conducted in Southern Ontario in 1954.

"Eighty percent of the history of life was unknown before he started his research," a colleague and a former student of Barghoorn's Associate Professor of Biology Andrew H Knoll, said yesterday, adding that Barghoorn was the catalyst for the research over the past two decades."

He almost singlehandedly discovered what happened in the first five-sixth of life" on earth said Stephen J. Gould, Agassiz Professor of Zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and Barghoorn's associate.

Barghoorn also tested the "moon rocks" for NASA during their Apollo Program from 1969 to 1971 to see if life existed on the moon.

During more than 40 years at Harvard--30 of which he spent as a professor of both biology and geology--Barghoorn earned several awards for his work, including the Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal given by the National Academy of Sciences in 1972. Barghoorn was also Curator of the Paleobotanical Collection at Harvard since 1949.

Barghoorn earned a Masters in 1938 and a doctorate in 1941 from Harvard.

Up until two years ago, when Barghoorn semi-retired, he taught a course on paleobotany, Biology 107, and a graduate seminar on plant evolution.

Knoll said that Barghoorn was "really fabulous" in working with his students on a one-to-one basis. As a group, his former students' achievements in paleobotany "dwarf any comparable list that could be made of anyone else in the same field," Knoll added

"He was a marveiously incisive and intelligent man," Could said.

Memorial services at Harvard for Barghoorn have not been set. He is survived by a son. Stephen F. Barghoorn of New York City, and by his brother, Yale Professor Frederick Barghoorn.