Pierre Legendre

Pierre Legendre (born 5 October 1946), is an emeritus professor of ecology at Université de Montréal. He founded the field of numerical ecology, which is a quantitative subdiscipline of community ecology, with his brother the oceanographer Louis Legendre.

Pierre Legendre obtained an MSc in zoology from McGill University in 1969, and at age 24, he earned a PhD in evolutionary biology from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1971. From 1971 to 1972, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Lund University in Sweden. From 1972 to 1980, he was research associate, then research director in an environmental science research centre at Université du Québec à Montréal. Since 1980, he has been professor of quantitative ecology in the department of biological sciences at Université de Montréal . He retired from teaching in September 2024 and was appointed professor emeritus at Université de Montréal in 2025.

Scientific prizes 1986 – Acfas Michel-Jurdant Prize (with Louis Legendre) 1995 – Miroslaw Romanowski Medal, Royal Society of Canada 2005 – Prix Marie-Victorin, Government of Québec 2013 – President's Award, Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution 2015 – Acfas Adrien-Pouliot Award 2019 – Alexander von Humboldt Medal, International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS)

Other distinctions 1992 – Royal Society of Canada, Academy of Science 2007 – National Order of Québec 2021 – Order of Canada