Robert Whittaker (ecologist)
American ecologist who redefined taxonomy and biome classification.
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Whittaker was born in Wichita, Kansas, earned a B.A. at Washburn Municipal College, and received his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Illinois in 1948.[1] He held positions at Washington State College from 1948 to 1951, then moved to Hanford Laboratories, and in 1954 became an instructor at Brooklyn College.[1] He married biochemist Clara Buehl in 1952, and they had three children.[1] He collaborated with ecologists including George Woodwell, W. A. Niering, F. H. Bormann, and G. E. Likens.[1]
His gradient analysis concept showed plant communities vary continuously along environmental spectrums.[2] His 1970 textbook "Communities and Ecosystems" compiled these ideas.[3] The National Academy of Sciences elected Whittaker as a member in 1974, and in 1981 the Ecological Society of America granted him its Eminent Ecologist Award.[1] Using temperature and precipitation as the two key factors, Whittaker created a biome classification system that bears his name.[4]
What the cited sources add
According to a 1982 article by Westman in the Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, Whittaker's dismissal from Washington State College followed his critical assessment of Clements' climax theory.[5] The same Westman article reports that Whittaker faced a six-year delay in getting his doctoral dissertation monograph on the Great Smoky Mountains published.[5]
References
- Wikipedia, "Robert Whittaker (ecologist)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Biographical Memoirs: Volume 59", National Academy of Sciences, 1990, p. 424–445 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Robert Whittaker (ecologist)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Nicolson, "Robert Harding Whittaker and the Individualistic Hypothesis", The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, April 2016, p. 154–162 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Robert Whittaker (ecologist)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Robert, "Communities and Ecosystems", Macmillan, 20 April 1970 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Robert Whittaker (ecologist)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Whittaker, Robert H. (1969) "New concepts of kingdoms or organisms. Evolutionary relations are better represented by new classifications than by the traditional; Hagen, Joel B. (2012) "Five kingdoms, more or less: Robert Whittaker and the broad classification of organisms". BioScience, 62 (1): 67-74. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Robert Whittaker (ecologist)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Westman, "Eminent Ecologist: Robert Harding Whittaker", Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, March 1982, p. 11-12 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Robert Whittaker (ecologist) (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Robert Whittaker (ecologist) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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