Jean H. Langenheim

Jean H. Langenheim (née Harmon; September 5, 1925 – March 28, 2021 ) was an American plant ecologist and ethnobotanist, highly respected as an eminent scholar and a pioneer for women in the field. She has done field research in arctic, tropical, and alpine environments across five continents, with interdisciplinary research that spans across the fields of chemistry, geology, and botany. Her early research helped determine the plant origins of amber and led to her career-long work investigating the chemical ecology of resin-producing trees, including the role of plant resins for plant defense and the evolution of several resin-producing trees in the tropics. She wrote what is regarded as the authoritative reference on the topic: Plant Resins: Chemistry, Evolution, Ecology, and Ethnobotany, published in 2003.

Langenheim earned a PhD in botany with a minor in geology in 1953 from the University of Minnesota. She was the first female faculty member in the natural sciences and first woman to be promoted to full professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was the first woman to serve as president for the Association for Tropical Biology, second woman to serve as president of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) and Society for Economic Botany, founded and served as the first president for the International Society of Chemical Ecology, and was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the California Academy of Sciences. During her time as ESA president, she initiated a project to document women's experiences and contributions to the field of ecology and conducted a follow-up project in 1996. Her research was summarized in two publications, and resulted in a large historical collection and a continued effort by ESA to document women's contributions to the field.

Early life and education Langenheim was born in Homer, Louisiana in 1925 and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She graduated from Tulsa Central High School in 1943.

Langenheim received a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from the University of Tulsa (UT) in 1946. She was the first woman student body president at UT. She earned her Master of Science in 1949 and PhD in 1953, both in botany with a minor in geology from the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation was entitled, "Vegetation and environmental patterns in the Crested Butte Area, Gunnison County, Colorado " and was subsequently published in Ecological Monographs.

Career and legacy Langenheim has conducted interdisciplinary research across five continents in the fields of plant ecology, paleobotany, and ethnobotany. She has conducted field work in the western United States, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Australia, New Zealand, Angola, Kenya, Ghana, and the Amazon rainforest. She was the first female faculty member in the natural sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) when she joined the faculty in 1966, and the first woman at the university to be promoted to full professor when she became Chair of the biology department in 1973. She taught undergraduate and graduate classes at UCSC from 1966-1994, retired from the university officially in 1994, but continued to advise graduate students as emerita faculty until 2009 and remain active in research, the university community, and scientific societies. It was during her time at Harvard that she began her research on the ecology and evolution of plant resins and amber.

Langenheim joined the faculty of UCSC in 1966, one year after the campus was established. She was a founding member of the Adlai E. Stevenson College, where she lived as the faculty preceptor for several years, and helped develop the graduate programs at the university. Her botany course, co-taught with plant physiologist Kenneth Thimann, was "highly popular because of the way it related plants to human affairs"

Philanthropy Langenheim has a history of philanthropic giving to UCSC. In 2004, she established the Jean H. Langenheim Graduate Fellowship in Plant Ecology and Evolution with an endowment gift of $200,000, to support students studying terrestrial plant ecology and evolution.

Documenting women's contributions to ecology In 1986, Langenheim began a project to document the careers, experiences, and accomplishments of other women contemporaries in ecology. She started the project because she was the second woman president of ESA at the time, and wanted to highlight the accomplishments of other women in the field:"Since there have been so few women officers, and I was the only woman president, except E. Lucy Braun, I decided that I would do my Presidential Address on the history of women’s contributions to ecology. This would not only ”educate” many, but would also provide the opportunity to give tribute to the accomplishments of women, and to many who have remained essentially “invisible” (and hence unrecognized)."

Honors and awards

1967 Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 1974-76 Chair, UCSC biology department 2006 Centennial Award from the Botanical Society of America for "contributions to the advancement of the plant sciences" 2011 Sigma Delta Epsilon (Graduate Women in Science) national honorary membership Jean H. Langenheim. 1969. Amber: A Botanical Inquiry. Science. Vol. 163, No. 3872, pp. 1157–1169. Langenheim, J. H., Thimann, K. V. 1982. Botany: Plant Biology and Its Relation to Human Affairs. United Kingdom: Wiley. 624 pp. Jean H. Langenheim. 1988. Address of the Past President: Davis, California, August 1988: The Path and Progress of American Women Ecologists. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America. Vol. 69, No. 4, pp. 184–197. Jean H. Langenheim. 1996. Early History and Progress of Women Ecologists: Emphasis Upon Research Contributions. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. Vol. 27, pp. 1–53. Jean H. Langenheim. 2003. Plant Resins: Chemistry, Evolution, Ecology, and Ethnobotany. Timber Press, Oregon. 586 pp. Memoir and biography: Jean H. Langenheim. 2010. The Odyssey of a Woman Field Scientist: A Story of Passion, Persistence, and Patience. Xlibris. 539 pp. https://books.google.com/books?id=IjNWRwAACAAJ