Robert Harding Whittaker (1920–1980) was an American vegetation ecologist, active in the 1950s to the 1970s.
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. at the University of Illinois.
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."[1] Thus Whittaker was innovative in both empirical data sampling techniques as well as synthesizing more holistic theories.
He was the first to propose the five-kingdom taxonomic classification of the world's biota into the Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera. He also proposed the Whittaker Biome Classification, which categorized biome-types upon two abiotic factors: temperature and precipitation.
Whittaker was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1974, received the Ecological Society of America's Eminent Ecologist Award in 1980, and was otherwise widely recognized and honored. He collaborated with many other ecologists, and was particularly active in cultivating international collaborations.
Ph.D. Students
Ecologists completing Ph.D.s under Whittaker include Walter Westman, Robert Peet (now at University of North Carolina), Susan Bratton, Thomas Wentworth (now at North Carolina State University), Owen Sholes, Mark Wilson (now at Oregon State University), Linda Olsvig Whittaker and Kerry Woods.
References
- 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
- ^ Robert H. Whittaker (1920-1980): The Man and His Work, by W. E. Westman and R. K. Peet Vegetation © 1982 Springer, pp. 98.
External links
- Robert H. Whittaker (1920–1980): The man and his work List of works
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