Henry Chandler Cowles

Henry Chandler Cowles ( born February 27, 1869 in Kensington, Connecticut; † September 12, 1939 in Chicago, Illinois) was an American botanist and botanists. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Cowles ".

Life

Cowles studied until 1893 at Oberlin College in Oberlin ( Ohio) and 1894 was instructor of natural science at Gates College in Waterloo ( Iowa) and 1895 graduate fellow at the University of Chicago.

In 1896 he moved from the geologic to the botanical department, after John Merle Coulter took over its management. In 1898, he was there his doctorate with a thesis on the sand dunes on Lake Michigan to the PhD. In 1925 he became professor of botany and director of the botanical department of the University of Chicago. He became professor emeritus in 1935.

Cowles was one of the first researchers who studied ecosystems as a whole, which he noted in particular the geographical aspects in the center of his studies. In vegetation science, he dealt primarily with syndynamischen questions. He was founder and first president of the " Ecological Society of America".

His work towards continued Frederic Edward Clements, who worked for the Carnegie Institution in winter Marine Biological Laboratory in Santa Barbara (California ) and in the summer in the Alpine Laboratory Pikes Peak (Colorado).

Cowles published in 1929 along with John Ernest Weaver, the first American ecology textbook, he also was the author of monographs on the territory of Vegetation Science. In particular, his studies on the successional processes (Plant succession: an analysis of the development of vegetation Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1916. ) And for Klimaxtheorie Nature and structure of the climax ( J. of Ecology 24, 1936, pp. 252-284. . ) were known worldwide.