Howard T. Odum
(1924-2002)
Howard T. Odum was one of the founders of ecology as a science. His father Howard Odum encouraged his sons Howard and Eugene to become scientists
Howard T. studied biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he published his first paper while still an undergraduate. His education was interrupted for three years by his World War II service with the Army Air Force in Puerto Rico and the Panama Canal Zone, where he worked as a tropical meteorologist. After the war, he returned to the University of North Carolina and completed his B.S. in zoology in 1947. Three years later he earned his Ph.D. in zoology at Yale University.
From 1956 to 1963, Odum worked as the director of the Marine Institute of the University of Texas. During this time, he became focused on the interplay of energetic and economic forces as influences on the environment. In 1970, he moved to the University of Florida, where he taught in the Environmental Engineering Sciences Department. He founded and directed the Center for Environmental Policy, and founded the university's Center for Wetlands in 1973.
The term "ecology" originates from the Greek words "oikos" (meaning "house," "household," or "place to live") and "logos" (meaning "study of"). It was coined by German biologist Ernst Haeckel in 1866 to describe the relationship of organisms to both their organic and inorganic environments, essentially the study of how living things interact with their surroundings.
But the flowering of ecology as a science in the United States in the 1960's is often credited to the brothers Howard and Eugene Odum.
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