Odum, Eugene Pleasants

▪ 2003

      American ecologist (b. Sept. 17, 1913, Lake Sunapee, N.H.—d. Aug. 10, 2002, Athens, Ga.), brought prestige to the little-known field of ecology, helping to transform it from a subdivision of biology into a widely taught discipline of its own. He was educated at the University of North Carolina (A.B., 1934) and the University of Illinois (Ph.D., 1939) and then took a job as a naturalist in Rensselaerville, N.Y. In 1940 he joined the faculty of the University of Georgia. There he served as professor of zoology (1940–57) and created two major research foundations—the Institute of Ecology, which he founded in 1961 and served as director until his retirement in 1984, and the Marine Science Institute on Sapelo Island. He also led the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory in Aiken, Ga., one of the largest in the world, which he established in 1951 to study the effects of a nuclear weapons plant on the surrounding environment. Odum championed modern ecology in his pioneering academic textbook on ecosystems, Fundamentals of Ecology (1953). He was the winner of the Tyler Ecological Award (1977) and, with his younger brother, Howard (Odum, Howard Thomas ) (q.v.), of the Crafoord Prize (1987). A biography, Eugene Odum: Ecosytem Ecologist and Environmentalist (2001), was written by colleague Betty Jean Craige.

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