biography
| name: |
Cowles, Henry Chandler
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1869–1939)
|
| biography:
| Botanist and ecologist, born in Kensington, Connecticut, USA. He studied at Oberlin College and took his PhD at the University of Chicago (1894). He then taught at Gates College, Nebraska (1894–5), spent the summer of 1895 as a field assistant to the US Geological Survey, and joined the faculty of the University of Chicago (1898–1934). His work emphasized the relations between vegetation and geology, and his studies, including The Plant Societies of Chicago and Vicinity (1901), helped establish the new scientific discipline of ecology. He made major contributions to studies of the vegetation in the forests, dunes, and prairies of the region around L Michigan and N Illinois, and was instrumental in establishing forest reserves in Illinois. In 1915 he co-founded the Ecological Society of America, serving as its president (1918). He was co-writer of the once standard Textbook of Botany for Colleges and Universities (2 vols, 1910–11) and editor of the Botanical Gazette from 1925 until his retirement from the Chicago faculty. |
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