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Joe Eastman, Ph.D.

When he’s not teaching musculoskeletal or cardiovascular human anatomy, Eastman’s anatomical studies take him to Earth’s most remote landmass, Antarctica. There, he studies fish living in sub-zero environments, and “some of the most interesting evolution you can find.”

About 30 million years ago, Antarctica was still connected to South America, and its ocean fauna lived in much warmer waters. After the split, most of those fish species succumbed to the cold. But thanks to a host of unique adaptations, a group of fish called the notothenioids evolved to “radiate” and fill out the niches of the changing ecosystem.

“In this group, there are fish with antifreeze proteins in their blood, fish with no swim bladders,” he says. “(Notothenioids) have just taken over; they comprise 90 percent of Antarctic biomass—there’s no other marine environment like that.”

Eastman and his team have discovered six new fish species in recent years, and despite the extreme conditions of his field research, his passion for the subject never dwindles. “I’m just as interested in this now as I was 35 years ago.”

Although ichthyology (study of fish) has always been his main interest, Eastman sees human anatomy as crucial to any biologist. “The human being is the most studied animal. To ignore human anatomy is to ignore the bulk of our knowledge about anatomy.”

Audrone Biknevicius, Ph.D

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