Categories newsmakers | 1950sPosted on

Dr. William J. Richards ’58

Dr. William J. Richards ’58 recently completed a two-volume work, Early Stages of Atlantic Fishes, a project 15 years in the making. He produced the books for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for which he serves as senior scientist at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami. Early Stages includes detailed descriptions and over 2,500 illustrations of fish in the waters between Hatteras and the equator, as well as the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. A self-described “farm boy from Pennsylvania,” he said that he had never even seen the ocean before coming to Wesleyan. He became interested in ichthyology, the study of fish, while taking a biology course with an assistant professor named Rudy Haffner. After graduating from Wesleyan with a biology major, he pursued his interest in fish while earning a master's degree in biology from Syracuse University and a doctorate from Cornell.
Dr. William J. Richards ’58 recently completed a two-volume work, Early Stages of Atlantic Fishes, a project 15 years in the making. He produced the books for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for which he serves as senior scientist at the Southeast Fisheries Science Center in Miami. Early Stages includes detailed descriptions and over 2,500 illustrations of fish in the waters between Hatteras and the equator, as well as the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. A self-described “farm boy from Pennsylvania,” he said that he had never even seen the ocean before coming to Wesleyan. He became interested in ichthyology, the study of fish, while taking a biology course with an assistant professor named Rudy Haffner. After graduating from Wesleyan with a biology major, he pursued his interest in fish while earning a master’s degree in biology from Syracuse University and a doctorate from Cornell.