Iris Kemp ’10.
It was the late 1980s, and Tony Harold was in the thick of research for his dissertation on phylogeny and taxonomy of deep-sea hatchetfishes at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He had been working with a sample of hatchetfish when he noticed some specimens had a unique pattern of dark skin down the sides of their bodies, resembling something like a sideburn. Harold was intrigued, as the sample was supposed to contain a single species, yet seemed to contain multiple species. Could he have discovered a new species of hatchetfish?
No matter his excitement, the young scholar was mindful of the larger research obligations he needed to fulfill in order to earn his doctorate. Returning the hatchetfish to an alcohol solution for preservation, he regretfully turned his attention to more pressing matters.
“I just left it for future study. I wasn’t sure I was ever going to do anything about it,” says Harold, who has taught marine biology at the College since 1996. “I was hoping to one day find a clever student who could take on this project and find out how many species were in this species complex (a group of closely related species).”
More than 20 years later, enter Iris Kemp ’10. Upon meeting the Honors College student, Harold sized her up, identifying within her a can-do attitude and an “infectious enthusiasm – not just for biology, but for everything.”
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