George Evelyn Hutchinson, (born on 13 January 1903) in Cambridge, is considered to be the father of modern ecology by many. On receiving the Tyler Prize in 1973, he said that the credit should go to Darwin and Charles Elton. Nonetheless, he is credited with infusing the science with theory that was anchored in natural history and transforming it into a science.
His father, Arthur Hutchinson, was a mineralogist who would have been the discoverer of radioactivity and terrestrial helium if he had not insisted on first finishing some work at hand. Hutchinson left behind the science of modern ecology, because ‘everywhere in education we should aim at seeing life as a sacred dance in which the champions are those who give most beauty, truth and love to the other players.’ His earliest work was on aquatic ecosystems. He studied limnology of lakes of the western Transvaal, South Africa, of the Tibetan plateau, and of northeastern North America. In 1935 he demonstrated the importance of the horizontal movements of water in stratified lakes in mixing the uppermost layers of water with the lowest layer. Later he obtained irrefutable proof of the circulation of phosphorus in stratified lakes. His Later work focused more on various aspects of evolution. Some notable works of his include: The Clear Mirror (1936), The Itinerant Ivory Tower (1953), A Preliminary List of the Writings of Rebecca West, 1912–51 (1957), A Treatise on Limnology, 3 vol. (1957, 1967, 1975), The Enchanted Voyage (1962), The Ecological Theater and the Evolutionary Play (1965), Introduction to Population Ecology (1978), and The Kindly Fruits of the Earth (1979).
In 1949, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the National Academy of Science in 1950. He posthumously received the National Medal of Science in 1991.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 