Howard T. Odum - Biography

Biography

Odum was the third child of the American sociologist Howard W. Odum, and the brother of Eugene Odum. Their father "encouraged his sons to go into science and to develop new techniques to contribute to social progress. Howard learned his early scientific lessons about birds from his brother, about fish and the philosophy of biology while working after school for the marine zoologist Robert Coker, and about electrical circuits from The Boy Electrician by Alfred Powell Morgan

Howard Thomas studied zoology 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 (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1947.

In 1947, Odum married Virginia Wood; they had two children. After her 1973 death, he married Elizabeth C. Odum in 1974; she had four children from her previous marriage. Odum's advice on how to manage a blended family was to be sure to keep talking; Elizabeth's was to hold back on discipline and new rules.

In 1950, Howard earned his Ph.D. in zoology at Yale University, under the guidance of G. Evelyn Hutchinson. His dissertation was titled The Biogeochemistry of Strontium: With Discussion on the Ecological Integration of Elements. This step took him from his early interest in ornithology and brought him into the emerging field of systems ecology. Through this a meteorologist "analysis of the global circulation of strontium, anticipated in the late 1940s the view of the earth as one great ecosystem."

While at Yale, Howard began his lifelong collaborations with his brother Eugene. In 1953, they published the first English-language textbook on systems ecology, Fundamentals of Ecology. Howard wrote the chapter on energetics which introduced his energy circuit language. They continued to collaborate in research as well as writing for the rest of their lives. For Howard, his energy systems language (which he called "energese") was itself a collaborative tool.

From 1956 to 1963, Odum worked as the Director of the Marine Institute of the University of Texas. During this time, he became aware of the interplay of ecological-energetic and economic forces. He then taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was in the Department of Zoology, and one of the professors in the new Curriculum of Marine Sciences until his move to the University of Florida in 1970 where he taught at the Environmental Engineering Sciences Department, started and directed the Center for Environmental Policy and founded the University's Center for Wetlands in 1973, the first of its kind in the world that is still in operation today. Odum continued this work for 26 years until his retirement in 1996. In the 1960s-1970s Odum was also chairman of the International Biological Program's Tropical Biome planning committee and was supported by large contracts with the United States Atomic Energy Commission with nearly 100 scientists, which involved radiation studies of a tropical rainforest His featured project at University of Florida in the 1970s was on recycling treated sewage into cypress swamps, one of the first projects that began the now widespread approach of using wetlands as water quality improvement ecosystems. This is one of his most important contributions to the beginnings of the field of ecological engineering.

In his last years, Odum was Graduate Research Professor Emeritus and Director of the Center for Environmental Policy. He was an avid birdwatcher in both his professional and personal life.

The Ecological Society awarded Odum its Mercer Award to recognize his contributions to the study of the coral reef on Eniwetok Atoll. Odum also received the French Prix de Vie, and the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science considered the Nobel equivalent for bioscience not originally honored by Nobel himself. Charles A S Hall has called Odum one of the most innovative and important thinkers of our time, noting that Howard Odum, either alone or with his brother Eugene, received essentially all of international prizes awarded to ecologists. The only higher education institute to award both Odum brothers honorary degrees was The Ohio State University which honored H.T. in 1995 and Gene in 1999.

Odum's contributions to this field have been recognised by the Mars Society who named their experimental station the "H.T.Odum greenhouse", at the suggestion of his former student Patrick Kangas. Kangas and his student, David Blersch, made significant contributions to the design of the waste water recycling system.

Odum's students have carried on his work at institutions around the world, most notably Mark Brown at the University of Florida, David Tilley and Patrick Kangas at the University of Maryland, Daniel Campbell at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Enrique Ortega at the UNICAMP in Brazil, and Sergio Ulgiati at the University of Siena. Work done at these institutions continues to evolve and propagate the Odum's concept of emergy. His former students Bill Mitsch and Robert Costanza are among a cadre of former students who have been recognized internationally for their contributions to ecological engineering, ecological economics, ecosystem science, wetland ecology, estuarine ecology, ecological modeling, and related fields.