caption death_date death_place work_institution birth_place nationality field birth_date residence image article_title name alma_mater
ransom a. myers march 27 , 2007 halifax , ns , canada dalhousie university lula , mississippi american , canadian biologist june 13 , 1952 canada ram_myers . jpg ransom a. myers
 ransom a. myers rice university dalhousie university
ransom a. myers

ransom aldrich `` ram '' myers , jr. -lrb- 13 june 1952 -- 27 march 2007 -rrb- was a world-renowned marine biologist and conservationist .
he was the son of cotton planter , ransom aldrich myers , sr. and fay a. mitchell myers .
at age 16 , in 1968 , myers won an international science fair for building an `` x-ray crystallograph '' which measured the symmetry of atoms .
myers graduated with a b.sc .
in physics from rice university in 1974 followed by an m.sc .
in mathematics and a ph.d. in biology from dalhousie university .
before joining the faculty of dalhousie university in 1997 as the first killam chair in ocean studies , he was a research scientist at the canadian department of fisheries and oceans in st. john 's , newfoundland .
myers was best known for his passionate warnings on the worldwide overfishing of the fish stocks in the oceans , in particular , the atlantic cod and southern bluefin tuna .
as a member of the iucn shark specialist group , he collected data about the decline of shark populations and directed the focus of the media to threatened shark species .
one of myers ' most important areas of research was stock recruitment : collection and analysis of data and the subsequent development of models to predict the survival rate for fish larvae .
in the october 2005 issue of `` fortune '' myers was listed among the world 's ten people to watch for `` working to develop new and better ways to husband the wealth beneath the sea . ''
he died in halifax , nova scotia , aged 54 , from a brain tumor .
