Howard T. Odum: Unraveling the Ecological Web | Scientist Biography

Odum was the third child of Howard W. Odum, an American sociologist, and his wife, Anna Louise Odum . He was the younger 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, fish and the philosophy of biology while working after school for marine zoologist Robert Coker, and electrical circuits from The Boy Electrician by Alfred Powell Morgan.
Howard Thomas 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.
In 1947, Odum married Virginia Wood, and they later had two children. After Wood's death in 1973, he married Elisabeth C. Odum in 1974. Odum's advice on how to manage a blended family was to be sure to keep talking; Elisabeth's was to hold back on discipline and new rules.
In 1950, Odum 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, which brought him into the emerging field of systems ecology. He made a meteorological "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 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 taught in the Department of Zoology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was one of the professors in the new curriculum of Marine Sciences until 1970.
That year he moved to the University of Florida, where he taught in the Environmental Engineering Sciences Department, founded and directed the Center for Environmental Policy, and founded the university's Center for Wetlands in 1973; it was the first center 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 and 1970s, Odum was also chairman of the International Biological Program's Tropical Biome planning committee. He was supported by large contracts with the United States Atomic Energy Commission, resulting in participation by nearly 100 scientists, who conducted radiation studies of a tropical rainforest. His featured project at University of Florida in the 1970s was on recycling treated sewage into cypress swamps. This was one of the first projects to explore 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. Charles A. S. Hall described Odum as one of the most innovative and important thinkers of the time. Hall noted that Odum, either alone or with his brother Eugene, received essentially all international prizes awarded to ecologists. The only higher education institute to award honorary degrees to both Odum brothers was Ohio State University, which honored Howard in 1995 and Euene in 1999.
Odum's contributions to ecosystems ecology have been recognized 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 on the station.
Odum's students have furthered his work at institutions around the world, most notably Mark Brown at the University of Florida, David Tilley and Patrick Kangas at the
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