Death and Legacy
Nielsen died in his sleep of a heart attack on 7 March 2001. He was in California for a conference, while on his way to Montreal from Australia, to attend the inaugural session of the governing board for the newly established GBIF, a project with which he'd been significantly involved. A few days after his death, and during the meeting Nielsen had been due to participate in, the GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Prize was conceived to honour his memory. The prize of €30,000 is awarded annually to a researcher who makes substantial contributions to biodiversity informatics.
A special issue of Invertebrate Systematics was published in 2003 as a tribute to Nielsen, and contained articles written by his friends and colleagues about him and his work. In 1995, a new species of moth was discovered in Western Australia and in 2005 it was formally described by Gerhard M. Tarmann. The moth, of the genus Pollanisus, was given the specific epithet nielseni by Tarmann, in memory of his colleague's extensive work in lepidopterology.
Read more about this topic: Ebbe Nielsen
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