Robert C. Dorion (top) and Stewart Springer (bottom)

Robert C. Dorion established this fund in honor of Stewart Springer, a world-renowned student of elasmobranch biology. Springer was a research associate at the Florida Museum of Natural History and a longtime friend of Dorion and University of Florida researcher George H. Burgess.

A noted shark expert, Springer was once bitten by a sand tiger shark embryo while he was examining its pregnant mother. He studied the sandbar shark for more than 25 years and discovered important information about the shark’s ecology and migratory pattern. This fund supports a professorship associated with research that Dorion sponsors in Latin American/Elasmobranch Ichthyology.

Springer passed away in 1991.