Arthur Tansley

Sir Arthur George Tansley ( born August 15, 1871 in London, † 25 November 1955 Grantchester / Cambridgeshire) was a British plant ecologist and plant ecologists. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Tansley ".

Life

Tansley studied in the years 1889 and 1893 to 1895 at the University of London and from 1890 at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1894 be. From 1900 to 1901 he undertook an expedition to Ceylon and Malaya. In 1902 he founded the later famous magazine " The New Phytologist ," which he edited until 1931. In 1907 he became professor of botany at the University of Cambridge and published in 1911 "Types of British Vegetation". In 1913 he founded the " British Ecological Society ", which he was president in the sequence also. In 1917 he founded the magazine "Journal of Ecology", whose editorial he held for the next 21 years. From 1927 to 1937 Tansley was Professor of Botany at Oxford University and organized the 1929 " International Congress of Plant Sciences " in Ithaca, New York. In 1939 he was elected president of the "British Ecological Society ". Other features were the presidency of the " Council for the Promotion of Field Studies" (1947 ) and the chair of the " Nature Conservancy Council" ( 1949-1953 ).

Major publications are Tansleys " The Use and Abuse of vegetational Concepts and Terms " (1935 ) and "The British Islands and Their Vegetation" ( 1939). In 1941 Tansley was awarded the Gold Medal of the " Linnean Society of London ." In 1950 he was knighted.

" The Use and Abuse of vegetational Concepts and Terms "

Tansley introduced in 1935 the term "ecosystem" in the biological sciences (in " The Use and Abuse of vegetational Concepts and Terms "). In this article, published in the journal Ecology, he analyzed the benefits and opportunities for abuse phytosociological ideas to reject some of the forms of thought influenced by holism, which were then distributed without reflection in the bio-ecology.

His article was a reply to a treatise of southern Africa research-based, influenced by Jan Christiaan Smuts botanist John Phillips, who propagated the ideas of the super- organism and of the biocenosis. Although Tansley accepted that this " fabric of life ... adaptable to special complex of environmental factors ... [ and ] real ' whole ' (often highly integrated whole), which are the nuclei of living systems in the sense of the physicist. " After Tansleys view but they can not be described as ' organisms '.

Tansley instead made ​​the proposal, " they - together with the whole of the contained physical impact factors -. Simply to be regarded as systems " For the " non-living factors " needed to be included in the environmental analysis. In these ecosystems " exist various kinds of interaction, not only between organisms, but between animate and inanimate. " (quoted Schramm 1984: 198f. )

Works

  • The New Psychology And Its Relation To Life. Kessinger Publishing, 2007. ISBN 9780548155134
  • " The Use and Abuse of vegetational Concepts and Terms ". Journal Ecology, Vol 16, No. 3 (July, 1935), pp. 284-307.
  • "The British Islands and Their Vegetation" (1939 )

Swell

  • Frank B. Golley (1993 ): A History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology. New Haven: Yale University Press
  • Engelbert Schramm (1984 ): Ecology reading book. Selected texts on the development of ecological thinking. Q.s. Frankfurt: S. Fischer
  • Ludwig Trepl (1986 ): History of ecology. Frankfurt q.s.: Atheneum
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