Stanley Adair Cain

Stanley Adair Cain (19 June 1902, Deputy, Indiana – 1 April 1995, Santa Cruz, California) was a botanist and pioneer of plant ecology and environmental studies.

Biography Cain graduated from Butler University with B.S. in 1924 and from the University of Chicago with M.S. in 1927 and with PhD in 1930. His doctoral dissertation on the heath balds of the Great Smoky Mountains was based upon field work in 1929 and 1930. His doctoral advisor was George D. Fuller (1869–1961). At Butler University's department of botany, Cain was an instructor from 1924 to 1927, an assistant professor from 1927 to 1930, and an associate professor from 1930 to 1931. At Indiana University, he was an assistant professor of botany from 1931 to 1933 and a research associate in the Waterman Institute from 1933 to 1935. In 1945 Cain was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and served as chief of the scientific section of the American Army University in Biarritz in the French Basque Country. The purpose of the U.N. Mission was to study rainforest vegetation in order to provide information for mosquito control in Brazil's efforts to prevent malaria. From 1965 to 1968 Cain was on leave of absence so that he could serve as Assistant Secretary of the Interior in the Johnson Administration. At the University of Michigan he resumed his academic duties in 1968 and retired in 1972. After retiring from the University of University of Michigan, he became an adjunct professor at the University of Santa Cruz. He contributed the article Archidiaceae to Grout's Moss flora of North America, north of Mexico, vol. 1 (1928). Renowned ecologist Stanley A. Cain was one of the first scientists to establish pollen analysis as a paleoecological resource for characterizing past ecosystems. In 1941, he published Foundations of Plant Geography, which distilled a large amount of scientific work from varying disciplines into one of the most comprehensive and insightful ecological studies ever written. Cain founded the Department of Conservation at the University of Michigan in 1950, the first academic department of its kind in the country. Their son Stephen Cain had a long, distinguished career as a newspaper reporter and editor in Michigan.

Awards and honors 1940 – Guggenheim Fellow 1958 – president of the Ecological Society of America 1959 – honorary doctorate, University of Montreal 1965 – Michigan Conservationist of the Year 1969 – Eminent Ecologist Award, Ecological Society of America 1970 – member of the National Academy of Sciences

Eponyms Calamagrostis cainii named by A. S. Hitchcock in 1934, based upon a specimen collected by Cain