Shigeru Nakano was a unique person and amazing scientist, who crossed many boundaries in his personal life and career to become among the most famous stream ecologists.  Nakano grew up in a small mountain village in central Japan, and spent his youth exploring the streams nearby. Within a 15-year period of graduating from Mie University in 1985, he published nearly 100 papers and book chapters, and earned a key faculty position at the Center for Ecological Research at Kyoto University.  Shigeru Nakano’s research evolved from studies of individual behavior of stream salmonids, to research on salmonid populations and communities at local to landscape scales, and finally to pioneering research on the linkages between stream and forest food webs that included birds, bats, spiders, and fish.  Key papers in each field inspired other scientists worldwide, and are highly cited.  The graduate students and postdoctoral researchers he mentored have become leading ecologists and research scientists in Japan.  Nakano pioneered new ways of linking ecological disciplines from individual behavior to ecosystem ecology.  Even 17 years after his death in March 2000 his papers continue to be widely cited, which is a measure of the importance and longevity of his legacy for stream ecology.