Eugene Odum

Eugene Pleasants Odum (September 17, 1913 – August 10, 2002) was an American biologist at the University of Georgia known for his pioneering work on ecosystem ecology. He and his brother Howard T. Odum wrote the popular ecology textbook, Fundamentals of Ecology. The Odum School of Ecology is named in his honor.

Biography Son of the sociologist Howard W. Odum , and older brother of the ecologist Howard T. Odum, E.P. Odum credited his father for imparting a holistic approach to exploring subjects. When contemplating where to conduct his advanced graduate work, he rejected both the University of Michigan and Cornell University, as he did not feel that this holism was embodied in their approach to their biology departments.

After getting his Ph.D. in 1939, Odum was hired to be the first resident biologist at the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve and Biological Research Station, in Rensselaerville, New York. The 430-acre preserve had been founded in 1931 and its research station established in 1938. The Preserve's first summer research fellows, also selected in 1939, were Edward C. Raney and Donald Griffin.

Marriage and family Odum and Martha Ann Huff, whom he had met as a student, married at her home in Wilmette, Illinois, on November 18, 1939. She continued her work as an artist. Odum was very proud of Martha's accomplishments as an artist. She often painted landscapes when traveling with her husband across the US and overseas. Martha Ann Odum joined her husband in Rensselaerville, where he continued to work at the Huyck Preserve. His research included studying chickadees and—more important for his future as an ecologist—inventorying the plants and preparing a habitat map. His purpose was to establish a basis for succession studies of the land so man could plan and manage ecosystems. He and Martha had two sons, William Eugene and Daniel Thomas Odum. Their son William died in 1991 at the age of 48, but had already made important contributions to science while a faculty member at the University of Virginia.

Academic career at University of Georgia In September 1940, Odum took a job as an instructor of biology at the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia). In the late 1940s, while serving on the university's biology faculty committee, which was then drawing up a new curriculum, he concluded there was an urgent need to incorporate the subject of ecology, since he learned that his colleagues generally did not know what ecology (in its own right) might be. He founded the Institute of Ecology, later named for him.

In 2007 the Institute of Ecology, which Odum founded at the University of Georgia, was named as the Odum School of Ecology, the first stand-alone academic unit of a research university dedicated to ecology. and had in 1930 been coined by Tansley's colleague, Arthur Roy Clapham. Before Odum, the ecology of specific organisms and environments had been studied on a more limited scale within individual sub-disciplines of biology. Many scientists doubted that it could be studied on a large scale, or as a discipline in itself.

Odum wrote a textbook on ecology with his brother, Howard Thomas Odum, a graduate student at Yale. The Odum brothers' book (first edition, 1953), Fundamentals of Ecology, was the only textbook in the field for about ten years. Among other things, the Odums explored how one natural system can interact with another.

Environmentalism While Odum did wish to influence the knowledge base and thinking of fellow biologists and of college and university students, his historical role was not as a promoter of public environmentalism as we now know it. However, his dedication in his 1963 book, Ecology, expressed that his father had inspired him to "seek more harmonious relationships between man and nature".

By 1970, when the first Earth Day was organized, Odum's conception of the living Earth as a global set of interlaced ecosystems became one of the key insights of the environmental movement that has since spread through the world. He was, however, an independent thinker who was at times, gently critical of the slogans and fashionable concepts of the environmentalist movement.

Legacy Odum's will stipulated that, after his death, his on the Middle Oconee River in Athens, Ga. would be sold and developed according to plans he laid out before his death. He would often show friends and colleagues hand sketched plans for his vision of this green community. Plans included that over 50 percent of the property would be protected greenspace and walking trails, managed by the Oconee River Land Trust. Profits from the sale of the land would go to the Eugene and William Odum Ecology Fund, after $1 million is set aside for a professorial chair at UGA in Odum's name. The land was sold to builder John Willis Homes who is honoring Odum's wishes at Beech Creek Preserve.

Odum's financial contributions were focused on not only the University of Georgia, but also the University of Virginia given his son's faculty appointment there, and the University of North Carolina where his father was a prolific scholar. Ultimately, his wealth—partly the product of book royalties—benefited those institutions that he respected. The Ecological Society of America offers the Eugene P. Odum Award for Excellence in Ecology Education, which was endowed by, and named for, Odum.

Publications Books

see also:

1963. Ecology 1975. Ecology, the link between the natural and the social sciences 1983. Basic Ecology 1993. Ecology and Our Endangered Life Support Systems 1998. Ecological Vignettes: Ecological Approaches to Dealing with Human Predicament 2000. Essence of Place (co-authored with Martha Odum)

Articles, a selection 1969. The Strategy of Ecosystem Development Comparison of population energy flow of a herbivorous and a deposit-feeding invertebrate in a salt marsh ecosystem (with Alfred E. Smalley)

About Odum Rotabi, K. S. (2008). Ecological theory origin from natural to social science or vice versa? : A brief conceptual history for social work. Advances in Social Work, 8 (1), 113–123. (Online)