Walles T Edmondson

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Walles Thomas Edmondson ( April 24, 1913 in Milwaukee – January 10, 2000 in Seattle ) was an American zoologist , limnoecologist and author. His research focused primarily on the effects of eutrophication , and he published major scholarly works on the taxonomy of rotifers that he had studied on Hispaniola , in lakes in the Himalayas , and in the United States .

life and work

Edmondson spent much of his free time on Lake Michigan as a child . At the age of twelve he was given a microscope, which may have strengthened his interest in the connections in nature. A year later he received the textbook Freshwater Biology by Ward and Whipple, "much too heavy for a boy to carry outside," which enabled him to identify freshwater creatures . Years later he was asked if he would like to write a second edition of this work, which he did in 1959.

He studied biology at Yale University with George Evelyn Hutchinson , among others, and at the University of Wisconsin with Chancey Juday . In Wisconsin he received his habilitation in 1942 . Since autumn 1941, while he was at Yale University, he was married to the author, limnologist and oceanologist Yvette Hardman Edmondson , who was two and a half years his junior . He then joined the US Navy as a civilian oceanographer . There he dealt with practical and technical issues such as the height of the waves, which made it possible to land on the beach, or the placement of mines in ports. From 1949 Edmondson taught at the University of Washington , where he held a position as professor of zoology.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, Edmondson received numerous academic awards for his work. In 1986 he retired from his active academic career. He settled with his wife on Lake Washington and, until his death, continued his long-term observation of details of physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of the life of the lake inhabitants from his Lake Washington residence, as he had begun in his youth. In January 1999 he lost control of his vehicle on a wet road in a hairpin bend. While his wife got away in the passenger seat with some broken ribs, he fractured his own neck and succumbed to it a year later with pneumonia .

Fonts (selection)

  • 1934: with George Evelyn Hutchinson : Yale North India Expedition. Article IX. The Rotatoria. PhD thesis , Science 10:153–186.
  • 1938: Notes on the plankton of some lakes in the Merrimack watershed. In: Biological Survey of the Merrimack Watershed. New Hampshire Fish and Game department, surv. representative no. 3, pages 107-210.
  • 1947: with Henry Bryant Bigelow : Wind Waves at Sea, Breakers and Surf. Publication no. 602, pages XI, 177. Washington, DC: US ​​Hydrographic Office.
  • 1959: Ed. Ward and Whipple's Fresh-water Biology , 2nd ed., Wiley New York. Foreword, Introduction, and the Chapters on Rotifers and Methods.
  • 1965: Reproductive rate of planktonic rotifers as related to food and temperature in nature. Ecol. monogr. 35:61-111.
  • 1974: Secondary production. Notices International Association for Theoretical and Applied Limnology, 20:229-272.
  • 1991: The Uses of Ecology. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Awards (selection)

itemizations

  1. ↑ a b Afterword by Garrett Hardin to WT Edmondson's: The Uses of Ecology: Lake Washington and Beyond. University of Washington Press, page 351
  2. ↑ John T. Lehman: Good Professor Edmondson . Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography , November 1988, pp. 1234-1240.
  3. ↑ John T. Lehman: Biographical Memoir . National Academy of Sciences , Washington 2009, page 26
  4. ↑ NAS Recipients On: National Academy of Sciences
  5. ↑ Naumann-Thienemann Medals , Auf: Society of Limnology (SIL)
personal data
SURNAME Edmondson, Walles T.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Edmondson, Walles Thomas; Edmondson, Tommy; Edmondson, W.Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American limnologist and zoologist
BIRTH DATE April 24, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Milwaukee
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 2000
PLACE OF DEATH Seattle