For the 10th anniversary of our journal Geochemical Perspectives, we are excited to publish a special issue presenting a 1944 update of Geobiologie by Lourens Baas Becking. This update was written in pencil over a seven week period while Baas Becking was incarcerated for attempting to escape Nazi-occupied Netherlands.
Lourens Baas Becking was a pioneering microbial ecologist. He coined the term “Geobiology” and was profoundly interested in organisms occupying extremes of temperature and salinity. He is perhaps best remembered for his proposition that “Everything is everywhere, but the environment selects”.
This volume, with its extensive detailed footnotes, brings us into the mind of one of the most important microbial ecologists of the 20th century. This issue also provides the most complete biography of Baas Becking and his fascinating life. We hope that this rather unusual Geochemical Perspectives will serve as both an important historical document as well as an insight into the state of microbial ecology and geobiology in the 1940s.
Considering the length of this issue, it is only published online, so no printed version will be made available. However, with this online format, all footnotes can easily be accessed from the text.
