John Michael Hayes

Abstract

John Michael Hayes was an inspirational practitioner and an intellectual giant in the field of isotope biogeochemistry. His career accomplishments revealed an extraordinarily broad and far-sighted vision that wed an understanding of organic chemistry, potent analytical capabilities and deep geological knowledge to afford new insights of the Earth coevolving with life. His early forays into position-specific isotope data and subsequent development of compound-specific isotope analysis were initially intended to further the field of organic geochemistry, which they most certainly did. However, they were also widely adopted throughout the natural and applied sciences. Accordingly, isotope methodologies and insights developed by John, his students and his colleagues came to have much wider relevance to areas of biochemistry, microbiology, cosmochemistry, environmental science, hydrology, oceanography, paleoclimatology, paleobiology, prehistory, biotechnology, forensics and commodity authentication.