Wake Forest Magazine, June 2009 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

Peter Weigl, professor
of biology:
‘What lasts are the
people you have worked
with; whose lives you
have touched.
’One would be tempted to say Pete Weigl
is being put out to pasture if only he hadn’t
spent so much time out in pastures already.
Besides, it is impossible to imagine a guy as
active and catholic in his interests as Weigl
standing around like a ruminant in some
sylvan setting.
No, there is research yet to complete and
writing to be done—not to mention classical
music to be sung, a fruit-and-nut orchard to
be tended, ecotours to be led, and books to
be read to gratify his self-acknowledged literary
addiction. He might be outstanding in
his field, but out standing in his field? Never.
Weigl, for four decades a member of
Wake Forest’s biology faculty, will retire from
teaching this summer. Biology is a department
known for the longevity of its faculty
and he is the first of its members to retire
since the late esteemed Charles M. Allen in
1989. He leaves behind on formal faculty
status a triad of venerable colleagues—Jerry
Esch, Ray Kuhn, and Ron Dimock—all of
whom came to Wake Forest about the same
time he did and who are all in their late sixties
or seventies today.
As an ecologist, Weigl has conducted
research at and taken student and travel
study groups to remote locations on five
continents. The Amazon, the Andes, Africa,
Asia…he’s explored it all—and that’s just
the first letter of the alphabet. A passionate
and politically active conservationist, he has
been instrumental in the protection of North
Carolina’s wilderness areas, from the longleaf
pine forests of the coastal plains to the
“grassy balds” of the southern Appalachians.
During his career Weigl trained twentyseven
masters and doctoral students. Most of
his research has been externally supported,
and in retirement he will continue to work
on a government-funded study of an
Peter Weigl
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