Jim Baen was a genius. I am head of a science research team at London's Natural History Museum, have a Visiting Chair at Southampton University, and I am a Royal Society Programme Manager so I have met the odd genius in the course of my work.
Other people will tell you about Jim's influence on the publishing industry. I would like to draw attention to his profound grasp of evolutionary biology. Jim had some original ideas on why Metazoa age and die–this is still a contentious subject–and he used me as a sounding board. I couldn't find any holes in his logic so I passed his work to Professor Karl Ugland of Oslo University, who subjected Jim's hypothesis to rigorous mathematical analysis using standard genomic theory. "Baen is a clever fellow", Karl concluded. I concur; the chance of a lay-person coming up with a new testable hypothesis in evolutionary biology is close to zero but Jim did it. His 'Why Die' article and Karl's mathematical test of it are published in the first issue of Jim Baen's Universe.
Jim was always fascinated by the wide variety of early hominids. "Our family tree is too bushy at the base", he would say to me. He suggested that maybe our ancestors had interbred back into the ancestral chimp populations and that was the explanation for so many morphotypes. I was deeply sceptical. There are good reasons why fertile hybrids are unlikely between higher vertebrate species but Jim persisted despite the cold water I poured on him. Then came news that analysis of chimp and human DNA showed that our respective ancestors must have interbred for some considerable time; it is even possible that modern humans are descended from the hybrids rather than 'pure' hominid strains. Had Jim lived, he intended to work up a new article on this subject. He had deduced a hypothesis of human evolution before the DNA evidence. This is an exceptional achievement.
Jim Baen was not an easy man. He retained that childlike attitude to the world that one associates with genius. He could be petulant and unreasonable. He was also loyal, decent and a lifeline to anyone who needed help. I suspect he would have risen to the top of any creative profession that he tackled. Science fiction's gain was science's loss when Jim chose the former. I am very grateful that he was my friend.
Professor John Lambshead
London, England, July 2006