G. Evelyn Hutchinson and the invention of new fields in modern ecology

Background/Question/Methods

Ecology today is a broad field encompassing systems ecology, biogeochemistry, limnology, radiation ecology, behavioral ecology and population biology.  This was certainly not true when the Ecological Society of America was founded. How did this change come about?  We consider here  the pioneering work of G. Evelyn Hutchinson (1903-1991)and his graduate and postdoctoral students at Yale. How did their work influence the development of these fields, as well as the applied and environmental ecology carried out by Hutchinson, his students  and their descendent ecologists?  The methods used to explore this question included reading Hutchinson’s published papers and books, conducting interviews with him, one of his teachers, Joseph Needham and many of his students, colleagues, family, and friends, and finding and evaluating a variety of archival materials especially letters. 

Results/Conclusions

As a result of my research (Nancy G. Slack, 2010. G. Evelyn Hutchinson and the Invention of Modern Ecology),  as well as reading a variety of papers by current ecologists,  it is clear that Evelyn Hutchinson,  together with his students, developed many of our modern ecological fields in the half century between 1940 and 1990.  Hutchinson’s students and their students  are some of today’s important modern ecologists.  Hutchinson’s intellectual family tree is shown on the poster together with the students and colleagues with whom he invented or developed new fields. These include ecosystem ecology (with Ray Lindeman); the first use of radioisotopes in ecology (with Vaughan Bowen); the development of biogeochemistry in the U.S. (V.I. Vernadsky, guano); Population ecology (with Robert MacArthur); behavioral ecology and conservation (Alison Jolly, lemurs); and  applied limnology--the reversal of eutrophication (W.T. Edmondson).  In conclusion,  many of the research fields developed  by and with Hutchinson and students in the 20th century shown on the poster,  as well as his niche theory and other aspects of theoretical ecology, have become the basis for  important ecological research in these fields  in the 21st century.