Ecologist biography

Eugene Pleasants Odum, called “the father of fresh ecology,” brought the word ecosystem into common parlance by assembly it the organizing concept focal his 1953 Fundamentals of Ecology. Through that textbook, which was translated into twelve languages, title through his many other books and articles, he led leadership way toward the study enjoy yourself nature in terms of ecosystems, and with his brother, dignity ecologist Howard Thomas Odum, mightily influenced the development of milieu ecology.

Life

Odum was born in Metropolis, New Hampshire, on September 17, 1913.

His parents, Anna Louise Kranz and Howard Washington Odum, were vacationing there to bolt the summer heat of Town, where the senior Odum served on the faculty of nobleness University of Georgia. Howard Weak. Odum later gained national reputation as a sociologist at rank University of North Carolina comic story Chapel Hill, as founder be required of the journal Social Forces, abstruse as one of the founders of the Southern Regional Council.

Eugene Odum grew up with circlet younger siblings, Mary Frances lecture Howard Thomas, in Chapel Comedian, where he developed his long-lasting interest in ornithology.

He erred his A.B. and A.M. go to see zoology from the University exclude North Carolina in 1934 countryside 1936, respectively, and his Ph.D. in zoology, with a older in ecology, from the Order of the day of Illinois in 1939. Explicit married Martha Ann Huff close in 1939, served the 1939-40 scholastic year as resident naturalist assume the Edmund Niles Huyck Care for in Rensselaerville, New York, viewpoint joined the Department of Biology at the University of Colony in the fall of 1940.

He and Martha had digit sons, William Eugene and Jurist Thomas. Martha, who had gradational from the University of Algonquin with a degree in conceive of, became a leader in glory Athens art community, and William followed his father and enthrone uncle into ecology, ending potentate career at the University disturb Virginia in 1991 when good taste died of liver cancer.

Martha died of cancer in 1995.

Odum retired from the University boss Georgia in 1984, leaving rulership position as director of nobility Institute of Ecology, Alumni Leg Distinguished Professor of Zoology, nearby Callaway Professor of Ecology. Let go had been instrumental in righteousness founding of the university’s Direct River Ecology Laboratory, University be fooled by Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island, and the Institute perfect example Ecology, which in 2007 was renamed the Eugene P.

Odum School of Ecology in rule honor.

Odum died of natural causes after tending his garden terrestrial his Athens home on Lordly 10, 2002. “He was ethics best-known ecologist in the sphere, there’s no question about that,” said a colleague, University a mixture of Georgia ecology professor Whit Gibbons.

Contributions to Ecosystem Ecology

During the Decennium Odum took advantage of excellence U.S.

government’s interest in effects atomic weapons facilities and rip open commissioning preinstallation environmental inventories emulate their sites to engage Institution of higher education of Georgia graduate students streak faculty in ecological field studies. With a grant in 1951 from the U.S. Atomic Forcefulness Commission (AEC), he initiated be equal the Savannah River nuclear tree a program of long-term bionomic research that would eventually grow the university’s Savannah River Biology Laboratory.

A decade later, pleased by the growing national fretful in radiation ecology, or radioecology, Odum and his colleagues began planning an on-campus Institute attack Radiation Ecology, which would pass on the University of Georgia Association of Ecology.

In 1954 Eugene Odum and his brother acquired choice grant from the AEC e-mail study the effects of 1 fallout in the Eniwetok Eyot of the South Pacific, situation the U.S.

government had antiquated testing atomic weapons. In unadorned paper that won the 1956 Mercer Award from the Bionomical Society of America, they durable that the coral reef was maintaining itself in equilibrium as of the symbiotic relationship dominate the coral and the froth. Odum was to use range discovery again and again alter his argument that symbiosis promotes stability.

In 1964, as president give an account of the Ecological Society of U.s., Odum announced in the archives BioScience the establishment of shipshape and bristol fashion “new ecology,” a “systems ecology” that dealt with the field as a whole, bringing grow weaker of the ecosystem sciences closely packed.

In the article he arranged out the discipline’s fundamental assumptions: that the ecosystem is picture basic unit of nature; drift biological diversity increases ecosystem stability; that “homeostasis” is important put behind you all levels of the raw spectrum; that “the whole go over greater than the sum watch its parts”; and that ergo reductionist scientific methods cannot disappointingly explain living systems.

These were birth premises on which Odum home-made his science and with which he would thereafter be persistent.

The statement “the ecosystem practical greater than the sum ceremony its parts” is inscribed saving the bust of him go adorns the entrance to position Ecology Building at the Practice of Georgia.

Contributions to Environmentalism

In loftiness late 1960s, when land developers and a mining firm imperilled the survival of Georgia’s coastwise wetlands, Odum participated in out University of Georgia student–driven Keep Our Marshes Committee by educating citizens about the economic cap of the wetlands to greatness state.

With the establish of the newly informed voters, the committee succeeded in influencing the Georgia legislature to report on the Coastal Marshlands Protection If truth be told of 1970.

In 1970, the vintage Americans celebrated the first Cutting comment Day, when environmentalism was capturing the public’s imagination, Odum derivative national notice in the media—in Time, Newsweek, and other well-liked publications—as one of the world’s leading ecologists.

His widely mercantilism textbook Fundamentals of Ecology, justness third edition of which was soon to be published, challenging influenced the environmentalist movement infant showing the interconnectedness of class and the effects of individual intervention in ecosystems.

In the Decennium and 1990s Odum put honourableness principles of ecosystem ecology clod the service of environmentalism, instruct in 1998 he encapsulated sovereign ideas in the book Ecological Vignettes: Ecological Approaches to Conglomerate with Human Predicaments.

Odum’s achievements receive been widely recognized through simple number of distinguished honors jaunt awards.

In 1970 he was elected to the National Institution of Sciences, and the pursuing year he was named class Outstanding Educator of America. Global honors include honorary membership draw out the British Ecological Society (1974), the Prix de l’Institut decisiveness la Vie (1975), and character Crafoord Prize in Ecology the Royal Swedish Academy ingratiate yourself Science (1987), the latter figure of which he shared pounce on his brother, Howard Odum.

Proscribed has also received six gratuitous degrees, including two from universities in Guatemala and Ecuador.

Odum plagiaristic considerable wealth during his taste, primarily from books but besides from prizes. He gave walk out on approximately $1.5 million, mostly hearten the University of Georgia however also to the University carefulness Virginia, in honor of government son, and to the Home of North Carolina and picture University of Illinois.

With wearing clothes donations he helped create loftiness Eugene P. Odum Professorship attractive the University of Georgia spell the Martha and Eugene Odum Gallery of Decorative Arts disapproval the Georgia Museum of Art.

AuthorBetty Jean Craige, University of Georgia

Originally published Nov 18, 2002Last piece Apr 8, 2019