Portal:Ecology/Selected biographies/9
Howard Thomas Odum (1924 – 2002) (also known as 'Tom' or 'H.T.') was an American ecologist. He is known for his pioneering work on ecosystem ecology, and for his provocative proposals for additional laws of thermodynamics, informed by his work on general systems theory. Odum was the third child of the American sociologist Howard W. Odum, and the brother of ecologist Eugene Odum.
In 1950 Howard earned his Ph.D. in zoology at Yale University, under the guidance of G. Evelyn Hutchinson. His dissertation was titled The Biogeochemistry of Strontium: With Discussion on the Ecological Integration of Elements. This step took him from his early interest in ornithology and brought him into the emerging field of systems ecology. Through this a meteorologist "analysis of the global circulation of strontium, anticipated in the late 1940s the view of the earth as one great ecosystem."
While at Yale, Howard began his life-long collaborations with his brother Eugene Odum. In 1953, they published the first English-language textbook on systems ecology, Fundamentals of Ecology. Howard wrote the chapter on energetics which introduced his energy circuit language. They continued to collaborate, in research as well as writing, for the rest of their lives. For Howard, his energy systems language (which he called "energese") was itself a collaborative tool.
The Center for Wetlands at the University of Florida, founded in 1973 by Howard T. Odum, is the first of its kind in the world to especially study wetlands. From 1956 to 1963, Odum worked as Director of the Marine Institute of the University of Texas. During this time, he became aware of the interplay of ecological-energetic and economic forces. He then taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was in the Department of Zoology, and one of the professors in the new Curriculum of Marine Sciences until his move to the University of Florida in 1970. He then taught at the Environmental Engineering Sciences Department for 26 years until his retirement in 1996. He also started and directed the Center for Environmental Policy at the University of Florida and founded the University's Center for Wetlands in 1973, the first of its kind in the world that is still in operation today. (Full article...)