Robertus Wilhelmus Maria (Rob) van Soest, born in 1946, is a Dutch

marine biologist Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many scientific classification, phyla, family (biology), families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others th ...

. He works at the

Naturalis Biodiversity Center Naturalis Biodiversity Center ( nl, Nederlands Centrum voor Biodiversiteit Naturalis) is a national museum of natural history and a research center on biodiversity in Leiden, Netherlands. It was named the European Museum of the Year 2021. ...

and is also affiliated with the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

. He co-authored with John N. A. Hooper ''Systema Porifera: A Guide to the Classification of Sponges'', a standard reference for sponge classification. He was editor in chief of the World Porifera Database (WPD) from 2004 to 2021, and is currently (March 2022) one of its taxonomic editors. He has contributed to the systematics, the phylogeny and the taxonomy of sponges, to their chemistry and biological properties (and the pharmacological use thereof) His zoological abbreviation is van Soest.

Taxa

A search on his name (March 2022) in the WoRMS database gives 691 taxa names authored by van Soest. See also taxa named by Rob van Soest.

Publications

He has authored (co-authored) over at least 170 peer reviewed scientific papers, over 60 of which concern the biochemistry of sponges.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:van Soest, Rob 1946 births Marine biologists Zoologists Living people