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Curator’s Choice
G. Evelyn Hutchinson:
The “Father”
of American Ecology
CLOSE WINDOW| The publications resulting from his role as biologist for the 1932 Yale North India Expedition began with a paper in Nature on high altitude lakes, but in his career he published almost 300 scholarly papers and books, in many fields. Yet the true diversity of his interests was far greater, and included the arts, literature, drama, music, human sociology, the history of science, systematics, genetics, conservation, and more, as well as the 1979 partial autobiography, Kindly Fruits of the Earth. His studies increasingly prompted his profound concern for improving the quality of the environment. In the first of over 30 years of essays for American Scientist, in 1943, he wrote: “The writer believes that the most practical lasting benefit science can now offer is to teach man how to avoid destruction of his own environment, and how, by understanding himself with true humility and pride, to find ways to avoid injuries that at present he inflicts on himself with such devastating energy.” |