Robert Whittaker (ecologist)

Robert Harding Whittaker (December 27, 1920 – October 20, 1980) was an American plant ecologist, active in the 1950s to the 1970s. He was the first to propose the five kingdom taxonomic classification of the world's biota into the Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera in 1969.[1][2] He also proposed the Whittaker Biome Classification, which categorized biome-types upon two abiotic factors: temperature and precipitation.

Robert Harding Whittaker
Born(1920-12-27)December 27, 1920
Wichita, Kansas, US
DiedOctober 20, 1980(1980-10-20) (aged 59)
Ithaca, New York, USA
NationalityUnited States
Alma materUniversity of Illinois
Known forgradient theory in ecology
five-kingdom system
AwardsEminent Ecologist Award (1981)
Scientific career
FieldsEcology
InstitutionsCornell University

Whittaker was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1974, received the Ecological Society of America's Eminent Ecologist Award in 1981, and was otherwise widely recognized and honored. He collaborated with many other ecologists including George Woodwell (Dartmouth), W. A. Niering, F. H. Bormann (Yale) and G. E. Likens (Cornell), and was particularly active in cultivating international collaborations.

Early life

Born in Wichita, Kansas, he obtained a B.A. at Washburn Municipal College (now Washburn University) in Topeka, Kansas, and, following military service, his Ph.D. in Biology at the University of Illinois.

Career

He held teaching and research positions at Washington State College in Hanford, Washington, the Hanford National Laboratories (where he pioneered use of radioactive tracers in ecosystem studies), Brooklyn College, University of California, Irvine, and, finally Cornell University.

Extremely productive, Whittaker was a leading proponent and developer of gradient analysis to address questions in plant community ecology. He provided strong empirical evidence against some ideas of vegetation development advocated by Frederic Clements. Whittaker was most active in the areas of plant community analysis, succession, and productivity. "During his lifetime Whittaker was a major innovator of methodologies of community analysis and a leader in marshaling field data to document patterns in the composition, productivity and diversity of land plant communities."[3] Thus Whittaker was innovative in both empirical data sampling techniques as well as synthesizing more holistic theories.

Family

Whittaker married biochemist Clara Buehl (then a coworker at Hanford Laboratories) in 1952. They had three children. Clara was diagnosed with cancer in 1972. She died December 31, 1976.

Whittaker married graduate student Linda Olsvig in 1979. He himself was diagnosed with lung cancer and died October 20, 1980.

Works
  • Robert H. Whittaker Communities and Ecosystems, Macmillan, 1975. ISBN 0-02-427390-2
  • Robert H. Whittaker(Ed), Classification of Plant Communities, 1978 (Handbook of Vegetation Science), Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 90-6193-566-0

References
  1. Whittaker, Robert H. (1969) "New concepts of kingdoms or organisms. Evolutionary relations are better represented by new classifications than by the traditional two kingdom's in Avantika ". Science, 163: 150-194
  2. Hagen, Joel B. (2012) "Five kingdoms, more or less: Robert Whittaker and the broad classification of organisms". BioScience, 62 (1): 67-74. doi:10.1525/bio.2012.62.1.11
  3. Westman, W. E. & R. K. Peet (1982) Robert H. Whittaker (1920-1980): The Man and His Work. Vegetatio 48: 98-122
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