The Odum School of Ecology building is the big idea that stirs imagination in people who philosophically believe in sustainability and this curriculum whole-heartedly. That is what is uniquely different about this project from anything other.
See the article in its original context from
August 14, 2002,Section A, Page21Buy Reprints
August 14, 2002,Section A, Page21Buy Reprints
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.
Eugene P. Odum, widely considered the father of modern ecology, who founded and for many years directed one of the world's largest outdoor scientific preserves, was found dead on Saturday at his home in Athens, Ga. He was 88.
The apparent cause was a heart attack, either Friday night or Saturday morning, said his biographer, Betty Jean Craige, the author of 'Eugene Odum: Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist' (University of Georgia Press, 2001).
Dr. Odum did not invent the discipline. The term 'ecology,' which comes from the Greek 'oikos,' and literally means the study of home or habitation, was coined in 1869 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel. In the early part of the 20th century, ecology was largely seen as a subdivision of biology, and the work of an ecologist was to observe and catalog species.
Dr. Odum, however, argued that ecology was not a branch of anything but an integrated discipline that brought all of the sciences together. He saw the earth as a series of interlocking environmental communities, or ecosystems, each of which embraced 'a unique strategy of development.'
While he wrote frequently for scientists, Dr. Odum also had a gift for speaking to the public. In an interview with the journal Natural History in 1998, he noted how organisms in conflict will sometimes cease their battles and cooperate.
'We point out the parallel of the United States and Russia trying for years to kill each other; now it's in their mutual interest to cooperate,' he said.
Dr. Odum spent nearly all of his professional career at the University of Georgia, where he joined the faculty in 1940 as a professor of zoology. In 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission accepted a proposal by Dr. Odum and the university to study the environmental impact of nuclear weapons production at the Savannah River Plant, the huge government installation on the Savannah River near Aiken, S.C.
Now called the Savannah River Site, it covers 310 square miles and contains both untainted and contaminated areas.
The initial study effort, first with a staff of only Dr. Odum and a few graduate students under a $10,000 government grant, evolved into the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, which today has about 150 employees and an annual budget of more than $12 million. More than 10,000 studies have been published on work done at the laboratory.
Dr. Odum went on to establish two other major research institutes at Georgia: the School of Ecology and the Marine Science Institute on Sapelo Island.
Eugene Pleasants Odum was born on Sept. 17, 1913 in Chapel Hill, N.C., where his father was a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina. His mother was an urban planner.
As a teenager, he had a column on bird life in a local newspaper, The Chapel Hill Weekly. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of North Carolina and his doctorate from the University of Illinois.
After graduation, he took a job for one year as the resident naturalist for the Edmund Niles Hyuck Preserve in Rensselaerville, N.Y. Newly married to Martha Ann Huff, a landscape artist, he later described it as a 'yearlong honeymoon.' As his wife painted the surrounding countryside, he cataloged the amphibians, birds and tree species on the preserve.
When he first joined the faculty at Georgia, his proposal that ecology should be part of the core curriculum for science students was not well received.
'They looked at me and laughed,' he said in the interview in Natural History. 'They thought that ecology was just going out and finding animals and describing and collecting them. They said, 'There are no principles. It is just organized natural history. It's not an important subject.'
'They were right about what it was then, but I got mad and walked out. Later they said, 'We didn't mean to hurt your feelings, but what is ecology?' Then I realized that nobody had written a general book about ecology. So with help from my brother Howard, I started to write it.'
![Eugene odum ecology pdf Eugene odum ecology pdf](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125846100/732235363.jpg)
The result was Dr. Odum's widely used textbook, 'Fundamentals of Ecology,' which was first published in 1953 by W. B. Saunders and has since been published in a dozen languages. Dr. Odum was working on a revised edition shortly before his death.
Dr. Odum's wife, Martha, and sons, William and Daniel, died before him. In addition to his brother, Howard, of Gainesville, Fla., he is survived by and a sister, Mary Frances Schinhan of Chapel Hill.
Dr. Odum wrote books intended for general audiences as well as scientists, including 'Ecological Vignettes: Ecological Approaches to Dealing with Human Predicaments' (Taylor & Francis 1998).
'In nature,' he wrote, 'there are a lot of answers about what we should be doing in society. Nature has been here longer than humans and survived a lot of catastrophes.'