Eugene Odum 1913 - 2002
Eugene Odum was born September 17, 1913. He grew up in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, where his father, Howard W. Odum, was a professor of
sociology. Eugene Odum's brother, named Howard after their father, was
born in 1920 and was to become a noted ecologist as well. Eugene is also
survived by one sister, Mary Francis Shinhan, who resides in Chapel
Hill, North Carolina, and by several neices and nephews.
Eugene Odum showed a deep interest in birds as a teenager in Chapel Hill
and with a friend named Coit Coker began a column called "Bird life in
Chapel Hill" in the local newspaper in the spring of 1931. When Odum
graduated from high school in 1929, his class presented him with a comb
because his wind-blown hair was never neat.
He received his bachelor's and master's from the University of North
Carolina and spent one formative summer as at the Allegheny School of
Natural History. His first faculty post was in the department of
biology at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1937, he
entered the University of Illinois to work on his doctoral degree.
After graduation, he took a job as a resident naturalist for the Hyuck
Preserve in upstate New York. He also married Martha Ann Huff, to whom
he was married until her death in 1995. While at the Hyuck Preserve,
Odum began research on birds and their habitats, research that would led
him to a greater understanding of how entire ecosystems work.
The more Odum thought about ecosystems, the more he was convinced that
there should be a way to study how one part affects another. Yet this
was in a day when there were no computers. Only crude tools were
available to understand how biological and physical systems interacted.
And yet, with the single-minded determination that became the hallmark
of his method, Odum set about creating a discipline that took a
revolutionary view of how ecosystems worked.
In the fall of 1940, Odum took a full-time job as an instructor of
zoology at the University of Georgia. He was the only ecologist in a
department of five faculty members, none of whom thought much about his
ideas of studying entire ecosystems. Before he could develop his ideas
further, World War II exploded. Odum spent three years helping teach
science to nurses, pharmacy-mates and pre-medical personnel. He even
found time to coach the UGA tennis team.
In 1951, the Atomic Energy Commission made a decision that would have a
profound affect on Odum's career and the future of ecology. The AEC had
earlier built the Savannah River Site on land in South Carolina just
across the line from Georgia. To see if the site had any effect on
nearby plants and animals, it proposed an ecological laboratory.
The AEC selected a proposal developed by Odum as a basis for what would
become the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Suddenly Odum found
himself with one of the largest, self-contained environmental
laboratories on earth, some 300 square miles or property off limits to
the public.
He helped set up research projects at the site, but one thing was still
lacking for the consistent study of ecosystem ecology: a textbook. There
had been many books on the ecology of parts of the natural world for
years but there was no single book that examined the entire ecosystem,
starting from the top down.
His book, Fundamentals of Ecology, was, for an astonishing 10 years, the
only textbook available worldwide on ecosystem ecology. It was
translated into many languages and was crucial in the training of an
entire generation of ecologists. Odum argued that ecology was not a
subdivision of biology or anything else. Instead, he said it should be
an integrated discipline that brings all of the sciences together
instead of breaking them apart.
Odum was also deeply involved in the establishment of and staffing of
the UGA Marine Institute on Georgia's Sapelo Island, which has continued
its mission of marine research for more than 40 years. All of Odum's
varied pursuits came together when the University's Institute of Ecology
was founded in 1960, with Odum as its first director. It immediately
made a name for itself, training a generation of scientists committed to
Odum's holistic method of looking at the world around us.
In addition to Fundamentals of Ecology, Odum published more than a dozen
other books.
Numerous honors came Odum's way during his long professional life. He
was elected to the National Academy of Science and was named an honorary
member of the British Ecological Society. With his brother, Howard W.
Odum, he received the $80,000 international "Institut de la Vie" prize
from the French government. He also received the Tyler Ecology Award
and a check for $150,000, presented by then-President Jimmy Carter in
ceremonies at the White House.
In 1987, Eugene and Howard Odum won the Craaford Prize given by the
Royal Swedish Academy, the equivalent of the Nobel Prize, which is not
awarded in ecology. Eugene Odum's share of the money, $125,000 went to
set up a private foundation for the promotion of research and education
in ecology.
Odum retired from the University of Georgia in 1984 but he never stopped
coming to work every day and published his last book in 1998, Ecological
Vignettes. He was also the subject of a documentary film that aired a
number of times on Georgia Public Television and which has been used in
ecology classes on campus.
Odum was preceded in death by his wife, Martha and two sons. William
Eugene Odum, also an ecologist, died after a brief illness in 1991, and
Daniel Thomas Odum died in 1987.
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