Eugene P. Odum

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Eugene P. Odum , full name Eugene Pleasants Odum, (born September 17, 1913 in Newport , New Hampshire , † August 10, 2002 in Athens, Georgia ) was an American ecologist . He is considered a pioneer of the ecosystem concept . From 1953 he established this connected way of thinking in his Fundamentals of ecology . The core of this concept is the assumption of definable, functional units of the biosphere , which are determined by the interaction of the organisms contained therein and the inanimate environment (ecosystems). The individual ecosystems come into contact with one another and accordingly form a global ecosystem .

Life

Odum was the oldest child of Anna Louise Kranz and the sociologist Howard Washington Odum . In 1934 he earned his bachelor's degree from the University of North Carolina , and in 1936 his master's degree in zoology. He made a conscious decision to do his doctorate at the University of Illinois , because it was one of the few institutions at the time that had a more holistic understanding of nature. In 1939 he received his doctorate.

In the same year he married Martha Ann Huff. With her he had two sons: William Eugene and Daniel Thomas. In the fall of 1940 he began working at the University of Georgia Department of Zoology . Together with his brother Howard T. Odum , also an ecologist, he examined the Savannah River Site and the Eniwetok Atoll in the 1950s .

In 1964 he became President of the Ecological Society of America and subsequently developed the theory of a "systemic ecology". In the 1970s he was considered the best known and most important ecologist at all. In 1970 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and in 1975 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Odum stayed at the University of Georgia until his retirement in 1984; at that time he was director of the Institute for Ecology, which he himself had co-founded. In 1987 he and his brother were awarded the Crafoord Prize . He died in 2002.

Works

  • Fundamentals of Ecology (with Howard T. Odum)
  • Ecology
  • Basic Ecology
  • Ecology and Our Endangered Life Support Systems
  • Ecological Vignettes: Ecological Approaches to Dealing with Human Predicament
  • Essence of Place (with Martha Odum)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eugene Odum - EcoTopia . In: EcoTopia . ( ecotopia.org [accessed February 27, 2018]).
personal data
SURNAME Odum, Eugene P.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Odum, Eugene Pleasants
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American ecologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 17, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Newport, New Hampshire
DATE OF DEATH August 10, 2002
Place of death Athens, Georgia