India, Jan. 8 -- Madhav Gadgil called his memoirs A Walk Up the Hill. It aptly summed up his life - bold, unconventional, swimming against the tide. In my three-plus decades of knowing and working with him, I found in him the rare ability to bridge several gaps, between various academic fields, and between academics and activism.

His achievements in the ecological sciences, as founder of the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, were remarkable. He was among the first ecologists in modern times to question the authenticity of the forest department's "scientific forestry", showing its ecological unsustainability. He provided a rigorous base of research for many people's movements challenging destruc...