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Frank N. Egerton studied biology as an undergraduate at Duke University, and then studied ecology for a year at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, before moving to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a Ph.D. in history of science. He taught introductory biology at Boston University for three years, then spent four years at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie-Mellon University, where he edited Edward Lee Greene's Landmarks of Botanical History (2 vols., Stanford University Press, 1983). He moved to the University of Wisconsin-Parkside in 1970 and taught history of science and environmental history until he retired in 2005. He has also published Hewett Cottrell Watson: Victorian Plant Ecologist and Evolutionist (Ashgate, 2003) and Roots of Ecology: Antiquity to Haeckel (University of California Press, 2012). As an emeritus professor, he continues to write an online history of ecology in the ESA's quarterly Bulletin.
The book by Professor Frank N. Egerton is both engaging and timely, published in the centennial year of the founding of the Ecological Society of America (ESA). This is a very useful book to introduce students - be they advanced undergraduates or graduate students - and their professors to their currently thriving and occasionally contentious field, and see how it developed and evolved over time. Professor Egerton begins his narrative by posing questions regarding the choices that were made by the founding men (key women arise throughout the history as well). For example: should the society serve as a forum for the presentation of scientific papers at national meetings, or should its primary role be that of promoting field work? The author takes a long view concerning the role of ecological scientists in being environmental advocates or staying close to the academic ideal of focusing on unbiased researchers reporting their findings. This forms one of the major themes that is interwoven throughout the eventful century he chronicles. He highlights some of the major large-scale research activities in the last century, ranging from Wisconsin, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and on to the International Biological Program, The Long-term Ecological Research program, and more recently, the Sustainable Biosphere Initiative and the currently still-developing National Ecological Observatory Network. Some of the key participants, including important players behind the scenes, as it were, in major funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation, are also highlighted. One book by itself cannot convey the entire sweep of historical and personal backgrounds of the movers and shakers in the field of ecology. While a series of more than 50 thumbnail sketches are presented of the most prominent ecologists in ESA history, Egerton's bibliography helps the interested reader pursue these backgrounds more deeply. Personal favorites of this reviewer, such as the inimitable Howard T. Odum, can only begin to be appreciated in a brief overview, but that is what this book serves best as: an introductory view to a complex and intriguing field. -David C. Coleman, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602
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