Robert Henry Peters

Robert Henry Peters (August 2, 1946 – June 26, 1996) was a Canadian ecologist and limnologist that championed a predictive approach to science in order to make quantitative models relevant to public needs.

His thesis on nutrient regeneration by zooplankton was supervised by Frank Rigler, a mentor and friend who profoundly influenced his vision of science.

This book is still highly cited (more than 5000 citations up to October 2016) and was influential in laying much of the groundwork for new fields of ecological research, most notably work on the metabolic theory.

This book was very controversial, and received both sharp criticism and high praise and still generates lively debates on the effectiveness of current approaches to ecology.

In the same year, he and Lars Håkanson collaborated on the book Predictive limnology,[9] a compilation of empirical models developed for inland waters.