History of Ecological Sciences, Part 53: Organizing Ecologists before 1946

Scientific organizations greatly facilitate scientific progress. The different kinds of such organizations include: societies, which usually require annual dues, have annual meetings, publish journals, and sometimes have geographically located headquarters; professional journals, which may or may not be sponsored by societies, sometimes have academic homes, usually within colleges or universities (Vernon 2000), but sometimes at museums or society headquarters or in government agencies; botanic or zoological gardens; and field stations, usually for both teaching and research, but sometimes just for one purpose. Field stations have usually been affiliated with academic or other institutions that provided funding. Discussions of such organizations have appeared in previous parts of this history, notably in parts 48–51, on plant ecology, animal ecology, limnology, and marine ecology, 1870s–1920s (Egerton 2013, 2014a, b, c), and marine stations mentioned here are mainly ones previously omitted. Not previously mentioned is the Organization of Biological Field Stations online alphabetical list for North America. One can also consult Robert Kohler's Landscapes and Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology (2002) for discussion of various stations. If one begins with an individual scientist, one can consult general sources to ascertain professional affiliation and memberships in scientific societies. One example is Allen G. Debus, editor, World Who's Who in Science: a Biographical Dictionary of Notable Scientists from Antiquity to the Present (1968, xvi + 1855 pages); another is Charles C. Gillispie, editor, Dictionary of Scientific Biography (16 volumes, 1970–1978) and periodic additional volumes under other editors; American Men and Women of Science (edition 1, 1906, and frequent new editions), which includes Canada and USA; other nations have comparable reference works. The online Biodiversity Heritage Library has millions of pages of taxonomic literature, representing tens of thousands of titles in over 150,000 volumes—a useful reference service hosted by the Smithsonian Institution. A useful critical bibliography is Arne Hessenbruch, Reader's Guide to the History of Science (2000), which has articles relevant to history of ecology. Most relevant are "Ecology" (Egerton 2000), "Environmental Sciences" (Sörlin 2000) and "Oceanography" (Mills 2000), but also relevant are more general articles on "Botany: General" (Hoppe 2000), "Botany: Britain" (O'Donovan 2000), "Botanical and Zoological Gardens" (Dauben 2000), "Bacteriology" (Helvoort 2000), articles on institutions, individuals, and nations, mentioned under specific headings, below. James McClellan has written a helpful guide, Science Reorganized: Scientific Societies in the Eighteenth Century (1985). Most societies he discussed continued beyond 1800. Donald Worster wrote a highly personal and idiosyncratic interpretation in his Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (1977), from Gilbert White to recent times, without illustrations or discussion of organizations. Frank Egerton, Roots of Ecology: Antiquity to Haeckel (2012a) discusses scientific organizations briefly, has 52 illustrations, and surveys the history of ecology down to around 1900. When Edward Kormondy and Frank McCormick edited a Handbook of Contemporary Developments in World Ecology (1981), I wrote a jubilant review (Egerton 1983), welcoming publication of such comprehensive information. Of the 34 chapters on nations, 9 chapters began narratives before 1900: Austria, Egypt, Hungary, Iceland, Mauritius, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, Switzerland; 13 chapters began narratives between 1900 and 1945: Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Puerto Rico (USA possession), Sweden, United Kingdom, USSR; and 11 chapters began narratives in 1945 or later: Brazil, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Israel, Korea (South), Mexico, Pakistan, Singapore, Taiwan, United States, West Germany. These editors perhaps gave few guidelines to authors, as some nations' articles are considerably more detailed than others. One might lament that four appendices listing major journals, professional organizations, research organizations, and abstracting services did not list starting dates (Kormondy and McCormick 1981:721–734, 741–746); "appendix II: Major Source Books in Ecology" does include publication dates. They edited the Handbook before the internet, and subsequently, beginning dates for journals were published by Graham and Dayton (2002:1485), drawing partly upon Brett, Brouwer, and Brett (1999). When compiling their Handbook, Kormondy and McCormick were unable to find ecologists who would discuss development of ecology in Canada, Finland, France, India, Ireland, or Spain (Kormondy and McCormick 1981:xxii). Now, Canada has a historian of ecology, Professor Stephen Bocking, who has discussed recent history of Canadian ecology, mainly in connection with resource management (Bocking 1997:151–202, 2004), and Professor Emeritus Eric L. Mills writes on the history of Canadian oceanography. Finland has a history of botany which discussed Finnish ecological endeavors, 1828–1918 (Collander 1965). There are more general histories of ecology in French than in any other language (Deléage 1993, Drouin 1993, Acot 1994, 1998, Matagne 1999). A reason France was slow to establish an ecological society was that it already had many natural history societies that were receptive to publishing ecological studies (Matagne 1999:43–46, 273–284). The same was true for some other countries. Furthermore, merely publishing articles on the ecology of regions within a country could help organize its ecologists at a later date by providing a tradition around which to organize. An example is the Cambridge University Botanical Expedition to western Nigeria, January–May 1935, publications from which initiated studies and interest in Nigeria's plant communities long before there were Nigerian ecologists to undertake similar studies (Egunjobi 1981:469–470). Science began in some countries while they were colonies. Historian of science George Basalla wrote a brief, important article, "The Spread of Western Science" (1967), in which he explained that the level of science in European colonies depended upon the level of science in the mother country. During the 1600s and 1700s, Britain and France were leaders in European science, and they also had colonies where science was best developed. James McClellan (2000) compiled a critical bibliography on "Colonialism and Science" (2000), and Roy MacLeod (2001) edited a collection of articles on colonialism and science. Even though Spain lagged behind Britain and France, its desire to be competitive prodded it to follow their examples in its own colonies. Ecology evolved out of natural history; the first institution to sponsor natural history research was Aristotle's Lyceum in Athens before 300 BC (Egerton 2012a:4–7). Emphasis here is on the period when four ecological sciences were emerging from natural history, and on until 1945. We saw in earlier parts of this history that aquatic research stations were the earliest ecological institutions, beginning in Europe before 1870, but spreading mostly after 1870, and slightly later in the United States (Kofoid 1898, 1910, Juday 1910, Vaughan 1937, Jack 1945, Hiatt 1954, 1963, Egerton 2014a, b, c). Land-focused stations developed more slowly, because many ecologists at universities conducted research on lands near their university, without needing special organizations or facilities. This survey partly follows Kormondy and McCormick's organization, but limited to years before 1946. Like theirs, my survey is incomplete, and ecologists everywhere can add to this story. Charles Gager compiled Botanic Gardens of the World: Materials for a History (1937). A crucial aspect of the history of natural history studies was the history of scientific exploration. There is a vast literature on it, to which Juan Pimentel and Michael Bravo provided an introduction in their "Expeditions" critical essay (2000). To their list I add: Percy Sykes, A History of Exploration (1961), which began with antiquity, and John Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance (1963), which began with European explorations during the 1400s. Some expeditions deserved special notice, foremost being Captain James Cook's three voyages, 1768–1779, of discovery in the Pacific Ocean (Villiers 1967, Beaglehole 1971, MacLean 1972, Hough 1995). John Beaglehole was the leading Cook scholar during his lifetime. Alan Villiers, in the Australian Navy during World War II, sailed a ship around the world and brought that perspective to his biography. Alistair MacLean's biography is well illustrated. The National Geographic Society supported author William Gray and photographer Gordon Gahan, who retraced many of Cook's routes (1981). Each Cook voyage had one or more capable naturalists who made important collections of biological specimens. France was inspired to do likewise, and sent out an expedition in 1788 that was lost at sea, and so France sent out another in 1791–1794 that was seized by the Dutch at Java, and finally a third expedition, 1800–1804, under Nicolas Baudin (1754–1804), which was very successful (Carr and Carr 1976, Farber 1982:40–41). Baudin's exploration was extensively along the Australian coast that Cook had not explored, and modern Australia celebrated Baudin's expedition findings with a lavish, very large volume that reproduced in color many drawings of animals collected, as well as landscapes and natives in black and white (Bonnemains et al. 1988). There were more relevant expeditions than can even be mentioned here, but Paul Farber's summary of them (1982:32–46) is an introduction. Responding to many scientific voyages of exploration, one historian wrote of "The Ship as a Scientific Instrument in the Eighteenth Century" (Sorrenson 1996). Some ecologists identify as much or more with another biological discipline as with ecology, and anyone who does, becomes organized by that discipline's traditions if he/she wants to publish in that discipline's journals. We should, therefore, itemize some histories of relevant disciplines. Captain James Cook's three voyages. Sykes 1961:175. Ornithology has at least six general histories, four detailed and two brief. The earliest detailed one is Erwin Stresemann, Die Entwicklung der Ornithologie von Aristotles bis zur Gegenwart (1951, English 1975), organized chronologically, with a few topical chapters at the end, and with a few illustrations. Next published was Peter Bircham, A History of Ornithology (2007), with numerous colored illustrations, a virtual history of British ornithology. Tim Birkhead is also British, but his The Wisdom of Birds: an Illustrated History of Ornithology (2008) is more of a general history, and also with numerous illustrations. Most detailed of all is Tim Birkhead, Jo Wimpenny, and Bob Montgomerie, Ten Thousand Birds: Ornithology since Darwin (2014), with many illustrations in both color and black-and-white, topically arranged, a large, impressive book. Both brief histories are chronologically organized; the earlier one is by British museum curator Michael Walters, A Concise History of Ornithology (2003), with numerous black-and-white illustrations; the second one is by French environmental scientist Valérie Chansigaud, Histoire de l'Ornithologie (2007, English, 2009), with numerous color illustrations. Peter Farber, unlike the above authors, is a historian of science, who wrote Discovering Birds: The Emergence of Ornithology as a Scientific Discipline, 1760–1850 (1982). Daniel Lewis provided an American continuation of Farber's subject in The Feathery Tribe: Robert Ridgeway and the Modern Study of Birds (2012). Ridgeway (1850–1929) was curator of birds at the Smithsonian National Museum, 1868–1919, and played a leadership role in professionalization of ornithology in America. There are two recent histories of Entomology: Ray Smith, Thomas Mittler, and Carroll Smith edited History of Ecology (1973), which covers history of entomology since antiquity in 20 chapters by 25 authors, has a few illustrations, and all chapters having extensive bibliographies; Jacques Aquilar's Histoire de l'entomologie (2006) is a brief, well-illustrated paperback, with many illustrations in color, and has an adequate brief bibliography. Historian of ecology Jean-Marc Drouin's Philosophie de l'insecte (2014) is a brief survey which is a cultural history of how entomologists and society, since about 1700, have viewed insects, with some illustrations and extensive documentation. There is a very substantial literature on the history of BOTANY, yet only two general histories are cited here, since others on particular countries are cited below under those countries. British botanist A. G. Morton, History of Botanical Science (1981) is a detailed work, with some illustrations and a good bibliography. Joëlle Magnin-Gonze is a librarian in a Swiss botanical garden. Her brief Histoire de la Botanique (2004) covers from antiquity down to about 1900, with numerous illustrations, many in color, and an adequate brief bibliography. Historian of ecology Jean-Marc Drouin has also written L'herbier des philosophes (2008), which "is a history both of botanists' philosophical ideas and of philosophers' interests in botany" (Scharf 2009:399). It has illustrations and extensive documentation. The first organization relating to an ecological science, and not a research station, seems to have been the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), organized in 1902 among west European nations, motivated by stresses on commercial fisheries in European Atlantic and adjacent waters. ICES encompassed several oceanographic sciences and was important for advancing marine ecology (Rozwadowski 2002:42–76, Egerton 2014c:396–399). At first, it included only a few countries in northwest Europe, but later it expanded on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and continues to flourish. The development of marine stations was discussed in part 51 (Egerton 2014c:348–374), and stations mentioned here are mostly ones omitted in part 51. In 1908, an International Congress of Geography met at Geneva, and plant ecologist Carl Schröter organized a tour of Swiss types of vegetation (Fischedick and Shinn 1993). It inspired Arthur Tansley to organize a similar international plant ecology tour of Great Britain in 1911, which, in turn, inspired American plant ecologists Henry Cowles and Frederic Clements to organize a U.S. tour in 1913 (Golley 1993:14–15, Egerton 2013d:357). A third tour was planned, but had to be postponed due to World War I. The first national ecological organizations were in Great Britain (1913) and North America (1915). These were extremely important beginnings, which merit our close attention. With Britain and America setting examples of founding ecological societies, when did other countries follow? Not very soon, because existing national scientific organizations more or less met the needs of new ecologists in many countries. The second international ecological organization was possibly the Internationalen Vereinigung für theoretische und angewandte Limnologie (1922), initiated by Einar Naumann and August Thienemann (see below). The Spanish began natural history explorations in the New World during the 1500s, yet it remained a minor aspect of their colonial efforts. The English and the French began natural history explorations during the 1600s, and those efforts expanded with their expanding presence. Elsa Allen's 206-page "History of American Ornithology before Audubon" (1951) covers European encyclopedists of 1500s, Spanish and French explorers, and British settlers and visitors down to the 1810s. The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique sponsored an International Colloquium in 1956 on Les Botanistes Français en Amérique du Nord avant 1850, with the papers published under that title (Leroy 1957), an essential resource on French natural history explorations. My own surveys of North American biological explorations (Egerton 2006, 2009a, c, 2011a, b), are international in scope. For the UNITED STATES, Marc Rothenberg (2000) provided a critical bibliography on the general history of science. Smithsonian Institution was established in Washington in 1846, and became important to natural historians, especially before the founding of ESA in 1915 (Rivinus and Youssef 1992, Fedunkiw 2000). The Botanical Society of America (BSA) was founded in 1893, but celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 1956, as it wanted to celebrate a new beginning in 1906, when it merged with Society for Plant Morphology and Physiology (founded 1896) and American Mycological Society (founded 1903) (Tippo 1958:1). A good number of the 40 chapters in BSA's jubilee volume (Steere 1958) are either by plant ecologists or are relevant to plant ecology, and a good number of plant ecologists are among the 50 botanists honored by BSA at its 1956 meeting. ESA was founded in 1915, and a centennial history appeared in time for its centennial meeting (Egerton 2015). There is a vast literature on the history of natural history explorations in America, and previously I provided a guide to much of it (Egerton 2006, 2007a, 2009c, 2011a, b, 2012a, b, c). However, I covered neither post-Civil War western explorations, which Richard Bartlett does cover in Great Surveys of the American West (1962), nor Alaska, on which some assistance is provided by Douglas Brinkley's The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879–1960 (2011). Marcia Bonta collected extracts from the writings of women naturalists in American Women Afield (1995); Joan Packard wrote a critical bibliography on "United States: Women in Science" (2000); and Robert Musil discussed Rachel Carson and Her Sisters: Extraordinary Women Who Have Shaped America's Environment (2014). There are useful regional histories of natural history. California is larger than many nation-states, and there are three important surveys of its biological explorations. Richard upon a of research in which has the and is the of the three from the French Expedition at in to the U.S. expedition in In of the centennial of the California of in botany wrote a survey of as a for Century much of his to the history of natural history studies in America, and so he also wrote from a Historian of science Michael Smith, after and before covered as well as natural history of and animals in Pacific California Scientists and the wrote a biography of the founding of the of University of and the of Science in the American West was of that and his first the along with assistance are discussed by and James is even larger than and wrote of the on 11 naturalists who or and included helpful their of upon one of those 11 in and the Exploration of and (2012). in the (2001) discussed a of both and a museum than in of History in the United States, with many illustrations. Robert and Stephen (2002) wrote similar also illustrated. more and chronologically in and in the American John and the of (2000), with and illustrations. In the United States, in ecology were more than in because American and government were and new ecologists could find both in and a of ecologists at a particular The University of developed such in botany and beginning around 1900. The of plant ecology under Henry Cowles is in Henry and more in Saving the though a plant ecology at the University of that Frederic The animal ecology history is discussed by on both of ecology Not all ecologists specific ecological some two Some ecologists were also The was organized in in and a later some of its to the American the example of the British A volume and included of in studies on histories, and two collections of studies on the history of ecology appeared as and 13 of the and 2000). In the same time published a of American history In a Society in and it had a museum by The University of Washington was also in since though its first natural only in and the were was one of the three of the and by the he was the was how and with other naturalists in the and The was the of American which other leadership was located in In the universities of New and established research stations. Frederic Clements began to a on the of which for years of research by and others Egerton The Institution earlier supported two other ecological stations, on a and in a the station, on and he became its in and Egerton continued until For the station, from and Daniel in who one near Egerton became its first 1993). In began In the Biological was founded in the years of research at its that its had provided a of ecological and that this was also true of other such organized an international of ecologists from comparable institutions, and edited their The Ecology of and Some of stations around the world were founded before and at Robert Henry at the University of wrote to animal ecologist at the University of of a society of plant and animal ecologists Egerton 2015). discussed it with the plant ecologist Henry Cowles who was but a national society, that could be organized at the meeting was and a meeting was on with at least They to an Ecological Society of America at the with John being to an American ecologists were about the which on 1915, with about 50 ecologists and supported by another 50 from ecologists not There were ESA until about first annual meeting was in with the annual meeting of with other with the first William and with World War was very of ecological in Europe, but less so in the United States, which only the in and of it on American did in the ESA began publishing its in and in Daniel at to over Plant World to ESA ESA the and it the first appeared in Ecological began in ESA to a of the began to the at the Institution to be Like the the and the research and to a of an ecological The was and was on and other During and after the began to his of the Institution In limnology, there was important at U.S. and Canadian universities before 1945. U.S. at the University of and at University and two ones at the Canadian universities in and below). Edward who began teaching at the in before he had his in initiated the in Egerton In 1900, he Juday as an and they were very and and Egerton became of the university, which did not his research, but was to One of was Arthur who would (Egerton initiated the after he in who were by his teaching and publications and by as one of leading The Society of American was organized in with Juday being one of the The of this organization was a on organized in meeting in At a meeting in in the of the was to and the continued meeting In 1935, Professor Paul University of a the founding of the Society of American in when there were It met with The title of a history of the of Ecology and it was founded in but was only the in which the University of developed with from the and is a history of the of which after 51 (Egerton did not the Institution because it was founded in and part 51 with the It was founded at because the and the

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.