Frederic E. Clements (1874-1945) was probably the first historian of ecology. The "General Historical Summary" in his Plant Succession (1916) begins with a paper published in 1685 and ends with a monograph published in 1914.

Results/Conclusions

Although his "summary" is really a literature survey, it provides a starting point for this historian's second look at the topic, the literature, and the naturalists who studied succession. I begin earlier than he did and end with him. There being many naturalists who wrote on succession, my selections favor those who used diagrams.