Prof. Madhav Gadgil (User:MadhavDGadgil) (1942–2026) was an Indian ecologist who championed environmental science, citizen-led open knowledge, and Wikipedia.

When many senior academics in India dismissed Wikipedia from a distance, Prof. Madhav Gadgil chose a different path: he logged in, showed up, and promoted it with great conviction. A pioneering ecologist, public intellectual, and chair of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, Gadgil believed that knowledge about local resources including biodiversity, rivers, forests, should be collated and used by local communities and not sit behind distant institutional walls. Instead, he saw Wikimedia projects as living platforms for citizen science — places where local communities could document their environments, hold authorities accountable, and democratise ecological knowledge. Until his passing in January 2026 at the age of 83, he remained a rare figure of his stature who actively bridged professional science, grassroots activism and the open knowledge movement.

Prof. Madhav Gadgil passed away in January 2026 at the age of 83. A pioneering ecologist, he established ecology as an academic research area at the Indian Institute of Science where he founded the Centre for Ecological Sciences. He headed the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel which he handled through public consultations and conversations across the region. He received a Padma Shri in 1981, the Padma Bhushan (2006), and was awarded the United Nations Champions of the Earth (2024). He was co-recipient of the 2015 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement.

He engaged and corresponded with several Wikipedians and was particularly interested in efforts to improve ecological and scientific content in Indian languages. He participated in outreach workshops in several states including Maharashtra and Kerala. He advocated the re-licensing of scientific and environmental literature under free licences, released several of his own books under CC BY-SA for digitizing them on Wikisource, and supported digitisation initiatives that enriched Marathi Wikisource. A significant portion of his father's library (Dhananjay Ramchandra Gadgil) had been digitized and made available through the digital library of the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics. He also encouraged the use of public datasets, including census data, to improve village-related content on Indic-language Wikimedia projects which resulted in the improvement of 25,000 village articles on Telugu Wikipedia.

Subodh Kulkarni, his close associate in the environmental movement and later an active Marathi Wikimedian, has noted Gadgil’s sustained encouragement of and support for the Wikimedia movement in India.

"Madhav Gadgil was a pioneering advocate for knowledge democratization, championing the role of grassroots communities in open platforms like Wikimedia. He envisioned these projects as vital "Citizen Science" tools for documenting local environmental data, biodiversity, and traditional wisdom, such as folksongs and folktales. By recording observations on issues like illegal mining and river health, Gadgil believed local communities could provide critical insights that formal science often overlooked. He envisaged these digital repositories to serve as a medium for social audits, holding authorities accountable through transparent, community-led data.
To support this vision, Gadgil collaborated extensively with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and various civil society organizations to scale awareness. He spearheaded thematic content generation & digitization drives and led by example by donating his own published works to Wikimedia Commons under open licenses. His influence successfully persuaded numerous authors and institutions to embrace the relicensing process, significantly expanding the Indian public domain. Furthermore, Gadgil served as a hands-on resource person for Wikimedia workshops across Maharashtra, Goa, Telangana, Karnataka, and Kerala. His sustained engagement effectively bridged the gap between professional scientific expertise and grassroots documentation, leaving a lasting legacy in the open knowledge movement."

Another user, Shyamal, grew up in the same campus neighbourhood where Gadgil worked and was influenced into contributing to the English Wikipedia after attending a workshop on biodiversity databases in 2005. Gadgil had then given a talk to the attendees, noting how Wikipedia had become particularly valuable within the community of mathematicians (this was based on what he had heard from his son who is now a professor of mathematics) and that other science communities would do well to emulate. – PS, SK, S

Fredrick Brennan had made over 11,000 contributions in his main User:Psiĥedelisto account, spanning across multiple Wikimedia projects; 9,807 in the English Wikipedia alone. He was prolific in his contributions to articles related to linguistics, typography and law (including Philippines law). Using his own open-source font editor MFEK, he designed free fonts (freely licensed for personal and commercial use) made available on his personal website. At least four of the articles Brennan wrote achieved good article status, according to his userpage: 2channel, Osteogenesis imperfecta (a condition he was born with), Deseret alphabet, and Bureau of Immigration Bicutan Detention Center. After 8chan, the site he founded, came under the management of Jim Watkins, it became a mecca for the QAnon conspiracy theory, and, later, housed the manifestos of the attackers of the 2019 Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso shootings. Brennan fought to have the site shut down and also participated in podcasts which critically researched QAnon. His founding of 8chan earned him a Wikipedia article, though he disputed his notability on his userpage. He spoke Esperanto fluently, and had at least some proficiency of Spanish, Tagalog, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, and Russian. He converted to Christianity in 2019. – Mimyuu, V

Mark Miller (User:Mark Miller) began editing Wikipedia in January 2007 and had made over 50,000 edits, expanding articles about a variety of topics, especially military history and Hawaii. Mark was proud of his Hawaiian heritage (he also signed with his Hawaiian name Maleko Mela) and descended from the formal Kamehameha family from the Royal Court of Kamehameha III. He took some pages to good and featured status and won the Million Award twice. He also helped out new users at the dispute resolution noticeboard and the Teahouse. Mark was instrumental in the earliest days (late 2012) of the Editor of the Week award. He was known as User Amadscientist back then and was an integral participant in the creation discussions for Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention and the EDDY Award.

Mark was an amazing artist, a passionate researcher and writer (especially genealogy), cook, gardener, avid outdoorsman, and enjoyed traveling. Just before his passing he had recently discovered a love of cooking, and enjoyed making lasagna especially for his neighbors.

Mark will be dearly missed by his beloved lifelong partner of 37 years. They enjoyed many adventures together and especially loved traveling. Mark also loved his dogs Zeus and Loki, and they were important members of his family. – G

Chip Berlet (User:Cberlet) was an American investigative journalist, research analyst, photojournalist, scholar, and activist specializing in the study of extreme right-wing movements in the United States. His Wikipedia activity focused on improving articles related to his field. – A