Our friend and colleague Jim Lowry passed away in Lecce, Italy on November 4th. He was born James Kenneth Lowry in Virginia, USA on October 2nd 1942. As a postgraduate, he initially studied English, but later switched to Biology, a switch that all amphipodologists will be grateful for. After qualifying at University in Virginia, he spent several years at Palmer Station in Antarctica, where, in addition to his biological studies, he had the distinction of having a mountain named after him – the 1,020 metres high Mt. Lowry in the Patuxent Range. He then worked for a while in New Zealand, before taking up his post at the Australian Museum in Sydney, where he was a senior research scientist for more than 40 years. He was one of the most successful research scientists at the Australian Museum in obtaining funding for his research. A series of young scientists were trained by him and have gone on to careers in carcinology in various parts of the world from England to New Zealand, as well of course as in Australia. Jim always had time to help young amphipodologists and pass on his knowledge.

He spent almost all his working life on the study of amphipods, publishing his first paper (on Microprotopus) in 1970. During his career, he published more than 150 papers on amphipods, especially on the Lysianassidira and more recently the Talitroidea. His most recent contributions are still in press and further papers will appear posthumously in the coming years as a result of continuing research in which he was involved with his colleagues. He did much more to describe the amphipod fauna of Australia than anyone had before him, including the instigation of, and obtaining funding for, a major study of the Amphipoda of the Great Barrier Reef that resulted in a 930-page monograph published by Zootaxa.
He will be missed by his many colleagues, all of whom have benefitted from his advice and friendship and by his loving wife Lucia, son Rafael and adult son Ken.
— Alan Myers, November 10, 2021

Jim was responsible for the creation of the World Amphipoda Database in WoRMS, which was based on his own global catalogue and was made publically available in 2013.  As one of the Chief Taxonomic Editors, he continued to work with the Amphipod editorial team in WoRMS to keep it updated.