Postwar ecology as big science and international science: variations on a theme by R. P. McIntosh

Background/Question/Methods

In a historical review of ecology published in the 1970s, R. P. McIntosh reflected on how ecology had moved since the 1940s from a simple and low-tech approach to a highly sophisticated experimental enterprise. He commented insightfully on the reasons for this astonishing transformation of the discipline into a big and international science.  We revisit the early stages of this transformation in the 1940s and 1950s, to explore in more detail the origins of this form of "big" ecology, while building on McIntosh's pioneering historical study.

Results/Conclusions

Big, international ecology encompasses not just programs such as the IBP, but includes the expansion of physiological ecology, one of the largest growth areas in ecology in the postwar period. This growth depended on investment in new kinds of laboratories that were vastly more expensive than their prewar counterparts.  Of special significance was the opening of the Earhart Laboratory for Plant Research at Caltech (1949) under the direction of Frits Went.  As the world's first "phytotron" (named after the cyclotron of physics), this lab represented a "big science" approach, albeit one that differed from the later biome studies of the IBP.  Investing in instrumentation -- laboratories as "big science" -- brought about the transformation that McIntosh described.  The Caltech example stimulated research in physiological ecology and was copied internationally.  The convergence of scientific ambitions with larger Cold War agendas helps to explain increased investment in ecology, especially experimental ecology, as well as the formation of international networks and collaborations.