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(Fwd) Dr. Eugene Odum



Here's the obituary for Eugene Odum, the father of ecosystem ecology, who 
was formerly a birder in Chapel Hill, NC.  (Forwarded from Ecolog-L)

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Eugene Odum was born September 17, 1913. He grew up in Chapel Hill, North 
Carolina, where his father, Howard W. Odum, was a professor of sociology. 
Eugene Odum's brother, named Howard after their father, was born in 1920 and 
was to become a noted ecologist as well.  

Eugene Odum showed a deep interest in birds as a teenager in Chapel Hill and 
with a friend named Coit Coker began a column called "Bird life in Chapel 
Hill" in the local newspaper in the spring of 1931. When Odum graduated from 
high school in 1929, his class presented him with a comb because his wind-
blown hair was never neat.  

He received his bachelor's and master's from the University of North 
Carolina and spent one formative summer as at the Allegheny School of 
Natural History. His first faculty post was in the department of biology at 
Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1937, he entered the 
University of Illinois to work on his doctoral degree.  

After graduation, he took a job as a resident naturalist for the Hyuck 
Preserve in upstate New York. He also married Martha Ann Huff, to whom he 
was married until her death in 1995. While at the Hyuck Preserve, Odum began 
research on birds and their habitats, research that would led him to a 
greater understanding of how entire ecosystems work.  

The more Odum thought about ecosystems, the more he was convinced that there 
should be a way to study how one part affects another. Yet this was in a day 
when there were no computers. Only crude tools were available to understand 
how biological and physical systems interacted. And yet, with the single-
minded determination that became the hallmark of his method, Odum set about 
creating a discipline that took a revolutionary view of how ecosystems 
worked.  

In the fall of 1940, Odum took a full-time job as an instructor of zoology 
at the University of Georgia. He was the only ecologist in a department of 
five faculty members, none of whom thought much about his ideas of studying 
entire ecosystems. Before he could develop his ideas further, World War II 
exploded. Odum spent three years helping teach science to nurses, pharmacy-
mates and pre-medical personnel. He even found time to coach the UGA tennis 
team.  

In 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission made a decision that would have a 
profound affect on Odum's career and the future of ecology. The AEC had 
earlier built the Savannah River Site on land in South Carolina just across 
the line from Georgia. To see if the site had any effect on nearby plants 
and animals, it proposed an ecological laboratory.  

The AEC selected a proposal developed by Odum as a basis for what would 
become the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Suddenly Odum found himself 
with one of the largest, self-contained environmental laboratories on earth, 
some 300 square miles or property off limits to the public.  

He helped set up research projects at the site, but one thing was still 
lacking for the consistent study of ecosystem ecology: a textbook. There had 
been many books on the ecology of parts of the natural world for years but 
there was no single book that examined the entire ecosystem, starting from 
the top down.  

His book, Fundamental of Ecology, was, for an astonishing 10 years, the only 
textbook available worldwide on ecosystem ecology. It was translated into 
many languages and was crucial in the training of an entire generation of 
ecologists. Odum argued that ecology was not a subdivision of biology or 
anything else. Instead, he said it should be an integrated discipline that 
brings all of the sciences together instead of breaking them apart.  

Odum was also deeply involved in the establishment of and staffing of the 
UGA Marine Institute on Georgia's Sapelo Island, which has continued its 
mission of marine research for more than 40 years. All of Odum's varied 
pursuits came together when the University's Institute of Ecology was 
founded in 1960, with Odum as its first director. It immediately made a name 
for itself, training a generation of scientists committed to Odum's holistic 
method of looking at the world around us.  

In addition to Fundamentals of Ecology, Odum published more than a dozen 
other books.  

Numerous honors came Odum's way during his long professional life. He was 
elected to the National Academy of Science and was named an honorary member 
of the British Ecological Society. With his brother, Howard W. Odum, he 
received the $80,000 international "Institut de la Vie" prize from the 
French government. He also received the Tyler Ecology Award and a check for 
$150,000, presented by then-President Jimmy Carter in ceremonies at the 
White House.  

In 1987, Eugene and Howard Odum won the Craaford Prize given by the Royal 
Swedish Academy, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, which is not awarded in 
ecology. Eugene Odum's share of the money, $125,000 went to set up a private 
foundation for the promotion of research and education in ecology.  

Odum retired from the University of Georgia in 1984 but he never stopped 
coming to work every day and published his last book in 1998, Ecological 
Vignettes. He was also the subject of a documentary film that aired a number 
of times on Georgia Public Television and which has been used in ecology 
classes on campus.  

Odum was preceded in death by his wife, Martha and two sons. William Eugene 
Odum, also an ecologist, died after a brief illness in 1991, and Daniel 
Thomas Odum died in 1987.  

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-- 
Charles W. "Will" Cook                  w 919-660-7423
http://www.duke.edu/~cwcook            cwcook@duke.edu
Biology Dept., Duke Univ., Box 90340, Durham, NC 27708