Paul was a founder of HPCLT (Dun Coillich) as was his wife Dr Margaret Jarvis.

Paul was the first Chair and continued in that role for 9 years.

Paul Gordon Jarvis (1935–2013) was a renowned plant ecophysiologist and Professor of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Edinburgh from 1975 to 2001. He pioneered the study of water and CO2

𝐶𝑂2 exchange between forests and the atmosphere, developing the widely used "Jarvis model" for stomatal conductance. 

Key Achievements and Career 

• Academic Leadership: Served as Professor of Forestry at Edinburgh University for 26 years, retiring in 2001.

• Research Focus: Specialized in the environmental physiology of forests, including stomatal behaviour, canopy light penetration, and forest-atmosphere gas exchange.

• Scientific Contributions: Developed one of the first process-based models of forest function (MAESTRO) and significantly advanced eddy covariance techniques for measuring carbon flux.

• Recognition: Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).

• Legacy: Known for linking microscopic stomatal knowledge to landscape-scale climate systems. After retirement, he was involved in native woodland restoration in Scotland. 

He was born in 1935 and died in 2013

Paul Gordon Jarvis, FRS: co-founding editor of Plant, Cell & Environment

Obituary from Plant, Cell & Environment

Paul Gordon Jarvis May 23, 1935–February 6, 2013

It was with immense sadness and a sense of deep loss that we at Plant, Cell & Environmentlearnt of the sudden death of Paul Jarvis, FRS, one of the four original founding editors of the journal, on 6 February 2013. As the first Chief Editor, and coincidentally almost the same age as Paul, I was personally deeply shocked by the news. During the first twenty years or so of the journal, Paul's individual character and highly analytical approach played an important role in developing the nature of Plant, Cell & Environment. He sought to endow the journal with a stringent and yet constructive reviewing style which would ensure only the best science was accepted for publication while providing encouragement and support for authors whose work did not yet reach the required standards.

The birth of Plant, Cell & Environment was both an exciting and somewhat traumatic event. Four young plant scientists, who came together partly via scientific conferences, and partly through the intervention of an even younger publishing executive, collectively agreed that the publication of experimental plant science in the UK provided little scope for what we believed to be the better class of research paper. It was probably the arrogance of youth, but irrespective, we decided we should introduce a new concept in the shape of a scientific journal that was not bound by the rigid control of a scientific society or a dyed-in-the-wool establishment. The four of us were: Paul Jarvis, an ecophysiologist at Edinburgh University; David Jennings, a mycologist at Liverpool University; John Raven, a botanical polymath at Dundee University; and myself, a photophysiologist then at Nottingham University; plus Bob Campbell, at the time a young publishing entrepreneur with Blackwell Scientific Ltd, of Oxford, who happened to know just everyone in the field. The scope of the journal would be the responses of plants at the molecular, cellular, organismal and community level to the requirements of and signals from the natural environment. The sole criterion of acceptance for publication would be quality of science, irrespective of the status or antecedents of the authors. Some of the established UK journals reacted extremely negatively to the new journal during the first few years, causing considerable headaches for me as Chief Editor, but throughout I received massive support from the other members of the ‘gang of four’. I particularly recall Paul, whom I had hardly met before the meetings to establish the journal, advising me in no uncertain terms to stick to our agreed ‘philosophy’ and not to let them grind me down – I thus learnt at first hand the strength of his passion for an idea once he had convinced himself of its validity.

The first issue of Plant, Cell & Environment was published in 1978 and contained just 76 pages; the journal then consisted of four issues per year. Now, the journal publishes 12 issues per year with around 200 pages per issue. The growth has not been unstructured, since a succession of editors and reviewers have exerted control not only over scientific quality but over scope and breadth. No one individual can be said to be responsible for the values of a publishing enterprise, but I believe in every issue one can discern the critical attitude personified by Paul Jarvis. Paul was argumentative but always was prepared, eventually, to concede a contrary view if it could be shown to be valid. Nowhere was this more evident than in the frequently stormy editorial board meetings that took place on a yearly basis, many of them in my home. The objective was at all times the future of the journal, but as is well known, when four scientists get together, there will inevitably be at least eight points of view in the discussion. This relationship became exponential as the numbers of editors increased! Throughout the discussions, one could always discern the voice of Paul, often delivering an opposing view, but always cogently and passionately argued. Indeed, the single word that springs to my mind now that I am forced to think of Paul in the past tense is ‘passionate’. This was probably an innate characteristic, but was nurtured and strengthened by his rigorous training in science and his experience of research over his lifetime. This is not the place to pay tribute to his research and scholarship, and there are those much better equipped than I to do so, but his pre-eminent position in the field of plant community ecophysiology allowed him to exert an authority that was extremely important in the development of Plant, Cell & Environment. Without Paul, the journal would inevitably have been a different and weaker enterprise. At its launch, the journal's design and organization, with its special issues and supportive approach to authors, was revolutionary. The fact that the surviving UK establishment journals, over the next 20 years, came to be remarkably like Plant, Cell & Environment in their design and organization is vindication of the steadfastness to our goals that Paul encouraged so strongly.

Paul's scientific contribution to plant community ecophysiology has been second to none. When Plant, Cell & Environment was inaugurated, much research on community responses to the environment was fuzzy work in which hypotheses were developed with a few random pieces of data that might fit, using simple equipment (indeed, many revelled in the belief that big questions could be answered with equipment costing pennies). Such research ignored the emerging computational and remote sensing technologies, and especially it failed to apply the rigorous quantitative base of theory and measurement, grounded in the physical sciences, that Paul exploited to the full in his own work. Without doubt, the current prominence of Plant, Cell & Environment in the publication of first-class studies on plant responses at the community level to environmental variation is a direct outcome of Paul's early guidance.

At a personal level, I shall miss his acerbic humour and particularly his outrage at what he saw as scientific laziness. On one occasion last year, he emailed me to inform me of an ill-thought-out paper that had evaded me, but which was directly in my own line of research. Paul was all for our writing a rejoinder informing the authors of their crass approach and illustrating how the research should have been done and how the results could well turn out quite differently. I persuaded him in the end that it would be a waste of time, but I guess that was just my own laziness showing. Paul was of course correct, as he has been found to be on uncountable occasions in his role in the analysis of other people's work. It would not be right to say that Plant, Cell & Environment will be harmed by the loss of Paul Jarvis, for Paul's influence has already been responsible, with that of others, for making Plant, Cell & Environment the undoubted success it is. This success should be seen as a tribute to Paul's indefatigable energy in pursuing only the very best in published science. Life in science is decidedly much less rich with his passing.