Robert Wald Sussman (Brooklyn, 1941–St. Louis, 2016) was a leading primatologist and pioneer in studies of the lemurs of Madagascar. With his BA and MA from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. from Duke University, he spent most of his career at Washington University, St. Louis, where he mentored some 30 Ph.D. students and conducted seminal research. His fieldwork was principally in Madagascar, but ranged as far afield as Mauritius and Guyana. He published over 150 scientific papers and wrote and/or edited some 14 books. These were mainly on subjects in primatology, but they also embraced human and primate origins, and larger social questions such as race and the essentially cooperative nature of humanity. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Beza‐Mahafaly Special Reserve in Madagascar in 1986.