Leo Maas

I know Leo Maas' work and highly respect him as a deep and original researcher. I sincerely hope that the problem will be resolved soon, and Leo Maas' research will be funded again.

Leo Maas is an outstanding scientist and a great person. I fully support what is stated in this petition.

I have been supervised by Leo for my MSc thesis and he has be so kind and insightful to guide me forward in a novel topic. I believe it's a great loss for NIOZ to let Leo such a great scientist go.

I worked closely with Leo in the early 1980's when he was a student in Utrecht.I admired his deep knowledge and innovativeness. He has pursued a very successful research career and I am astonished that his position will no longer be funded by NIOZ. Basic research in physical oceanography is fundamental to predictions of our environment and solutions of environmental problems affecting our society.

This is an incredibly short-sighted decision by NIOZ to eliminate the position of such an accomplished scientist.

Theory and observation are the two faces of valuable research. Leo Maas's contributions to our understanding of the role of internal waves in the ocean are very important. Observations without a theoretical framework for interpretations are useless. I truly hope that Royal Noiz will continue to fund this kind of research.

I am a PhD candidate at NIOZ. I work in a different field than Leo and I know him very little, at a personal level. But I know very well some of his latest master and PhD student as well as his postdocs and fellow senior scientists. They are and have always been, all very fond of Leo as a person, supervisor and colleague and extremely enthusiastic of working and collaborate with him. Leo is very eminent scientist in his field, which is theoretical and fundamental for oceanography. If you check any English dictionary for the adjective "fundamental" you will see it means "of great importance, essential". And that is exactly what fundamental science is for applied science. I am very concerned of the future implications the decision of abolish Leo's research line will imply for NIOZ reputation, as an Institute of international level. I believe it is shortsighted and deleterious for the Institute itself and for its overall scientific output. I hope the NIOZ management will reconsider it.

Leo Maas is very well known in the world for its work on internal gravity waves but also on all topics concerning continental slope circulation. I greatly appreciated his advices in many circonstances (in seminars, when I educated students, etc...) and I hope that his professional status at NIOZ will be soon clarified.

Leo is a very good scientist, and I believe should be allowed to continue in his research position at NIOZ. Not only is he a good scientist but is incredibly helpful to others. My own experience of this resulted in the paper http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wavemoti.2015.09.009 which I wrote with his student Felix Beckebanze. I'm an applied mathematician but found myself working with a more experimental/observational "internal waves" (estuaries, lakes, coastal margins) group. While earning my keep with them by helping grad students with computation I kept rediscovering internal wave exact solutions, etc., and a small improvement to one of Leo's papers. When I emailed Leo and told him my plight (me not being current with the literature, etc.) and my newish insights, he put me into contact with his student, Felix, and, I think, helped science progress. Less helpful people would have ignored my emails.

It is distressing to hear of the apparently capricious dismissal of Leo Maas, an excellent productive scientist whose work on internal waves and other fluid dynamic phenomena is well known and highly regarded.

I have been lucky to meet Leo while working at NIOZ. I helped him supervising some students, during their master and bachelor projects. His enthusiasm, his tireless curiosity and uncompromising scientific rigor have been an inspiring example. His kindness and friendliness have been the most pleasant company while living on Texel. Clever applications are born from a deep understanding of the fundamentals, not from running after the latest or the fanciest. Leo devoted his career to better understanding some fundamental aspects of the dynamics and energetics of the ocean. In my view, the choice of the NIOZ management is shortsighted, not to say disrespectful towards the person. A choice in line with a vision of science more interested in making headlines, than in making progress in the understanding of the world we live in. Andrea Cimatoribus, EPFL, Lausanne

Leo is an incredible good scientist, lecturer and supervisor. He has contributed by far the most to my academic educating: he supervised my Bachelor and Master theses at Utrecht University, taught the "Wave Attractor" course, and is the co-supervisor of my ongoing interdisciplinary PhD. Over the years, Leo's enthousiasm, dedication, scientific rigour, and talent for asking the right questions has guided me to deeper and new insights on internal waves. It has come as a big surprise that NIOZ dares to suspend such a succesful scientist from all his work. This includes the supervision of my current PhD. It is totally inconsistent to grant Leo Maas with NWO PhD grants, but then forbit the supervision of these PhD projects. My PhD project was in fact granted on the basis of full employment of my supervisors for the entire period of the PhD! NIOZ also failed to inform me why they canceled the indispensable supervision by Leo. In this Spring semester of 2016, Leo and I were/are teaching "Wave Attractors" (he did the lectures, I do the tutorials). From one day to the other, he was forced to stop teaching this course. I doubt that the responsible at NIOZ were aware of all consequences of their decision. I hope they reconsider it.

I find it extremely shortsighted of the institute to let an excellent scientist like Leo go. This critically weakens the physical oceanography competence at the NIOZ and I sincerely hope that the leadership reconsiders.

I have known Leo Maas since 18 years ago, and during this time many of his papers have been extremely useful for my own work in Mexico, and education in the Netherlands. Leo has made important contributions in Physical Oceanography and fundamental Fluid Dynamics oriented to understand the physics of the oceans. He is one of the most respected scientists in the Netherlands, and it is therefore hard to believe that an important institution of a developed country decided to abolish the position of this outstanding researcher. I firmly believe that NIOZ should reconsider this strange decision.

The abolishment of theoretical oceanography and Leo Maas’s function at NIOZ is incoherent with the NIOZ scientific 2014-2020 program which is, as they state in their program, based on multidisciplinary, advanced fundamental and frontier applied marine scientific capabilities“, and “fundamental understanding of key-processes”. With this move the NIOZ institute is loosing credibility in both, their science program and their moral attitude towards colleagues who significantly contributed to the fame of the NIOZ and the knowledge of theoretical oceanography in general.

Leo Maas' expertise in oceanograhy is huge. It would be a great loss for Dutch marine research, which NIOZ should represent, if the "physics" side gets further abandoned.

Leo is a great scientist, professor and supervisor. Thanks to his guidance I am close to defend my PhD thesis based on observational oceanography.

It is rare to meet a scientist with the vision and depth of knowledge that Leo Maas has. He is certainly invaluable for the oceanographic community. This situation is simply outrageous.

Leo Maas is an excellent scientist, who has made brilliant contributions to physical oceanography. In particular his work on internal waves is considered as highly original and significant, and has yielded him a world reputation. It is astonishing that the directors of NIOZ treat Leo Maas in this way. They should be proud of having excellent scientists of Leo’s stature working at NIOZ. The way Leo Maas is treated by his own institute, after so many years of excellent scientific activities, is totally unfair and unacceptable.

Leo Maas has made many brilliant and highly original contributions to physical oceanography. Through his own research, his collaboration with others, and his role in mentoring younger scientists, he has considerably enhanced the international reputation of NIOZ. Abolishing his position will do great damage to Holland's hitherto excellent reputation in oceanography and greatly weaken NIOZ itself.