Sidney J. Holt (born 28 February 1926) is an important founder of fisheries science. He is best known for the book On the Dynamics of Exploited Fish Populations which he published with Ray Beverton in 1957.[1] The book is a cornerstone of modern fisheries science and remains much used today. Holt served with the FAO in 1953 and with other UN agencies for another 25 years.[2] After his retirement in 1979, Holt has remained active in work related to the International Whaling Commission and conservation of whales in general, also publishing his views about whaling and fisheries management in academic journals.
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Much of the foundations of quantitative fisheries science were laid out in the book On the Dynamics of Exploited Fish Populations which Beverton and Holt wrote at the Fisheries Laboratory in Lowestoft (UK).[1] In his review of the 1993 reprint of the book, Ray Hilborn writes "It is remarkable how the book has stood the test of time and still provides a survey of the important topics in fisheries management."[3] The book was reprinted in 2004 with a new foreword by Holt.
Holt's later achievements mostly relate to whaling. According to Beverton, Holt "saved the great whales in the early 1970s".[4] The legacy of the 1957 Beverton and Holt treatise is commemorated in the volume Advances in Fisheries Science. 50 years on from Beverton and Holt.[5]. The volume includes a foreword by Holt. Outside fisheries science, Holt is best known for the Beverton–Holt model. In population ecology the model is used as a stand-alone discrete time population model or as a model of density dependence in larger population models. Originally the model had a more specific usage; it was devised to describe the dependence of recruitment on spawning stock biomass.