Howard T. Odum timeline
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This is a part of the Howard T. Odum Collection
1923
| Howard Odum is born to Howard Washington and Anna Louise Odum in Chapel Hill North Carolina. He is the third child of the elder Odums following his Brother Eugene (B. 1913) and sister Mary Francis (b. 1919).
1947
| Odum earns his B.S. in zoology (Phi Beta Kappa) at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
1950
| Odum receives his Ph.D. from Yale University under the distinguished ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson. He is also also influenced by Gordon Riley. His dissertation is titled The Biogeochemistry of Strontium: With Discussion on the Ecological Integration of Elements.
1950-1954
| Odum is a faculty member at the University of Florida.
| Odum begins his seminal research on Silver Springs in which he evaluates the energetics of the spring’s food web, publishing the results in Ecological Monographs. This becames and classic in the ecological sciences.
1954-1956
| Odum is a faculty member at Duke University.
1955
| Odum and physicist Richard Pinkerton propose that natural systems tend to operate at an efficiency that produces the maximum power output, not the maximum efficiency. This will become known as the "maximum power principle."
| With brother Eugene, Odum publishes a seminal study on reef metabolism on Enewetak Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. That study leads to their joint receipt of the Mercer Award from the Ecological Society of America in 1956.
1956-1963
| Odum directs the Marine Station at the University of Texas
1963-1966
| Odum is Chief Scientist at the Puerto Rico Nuclear Center.
1966-1970
| Odum is a faculty member at the University of North Carolina.
1970-2002
| Odum is a faculty member at the University of Florida.
1971
| Environment, Power, and Society is published.
1973
| Odum founds the Center for Wetlands at the University of Florida, which he will direct for nearly two decades.
1975
| With brother Eugene, Odum receives the $80,000 international Prix de l’Institut de la Vie awarded by the French government.
1976
| An Energy Basis for Man and Nature is published.
late 1970s
| Odum and his graduate students embark on a series of studies of south Florida, the Everglades, and Lake Okeechobee that result in recommendations for fixing many environmental problems, nearly a quarter century prior to Congress allocating billions for the same tasks.
1983
| Systems Ecology is published, will go on to called by some the “Odum Bible”
1987
| With brother Eugene, Odum receives the Crafoord Prize-considered by some to be equivalent to a Nobel Prize in ecology-from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
1999
| Odum donates a 15 acre wooded parcel, including a 6 acre cypress dome, to the University of Florida. It is Odum’s wish that the property (and especially the dome) be used for education and research. The property is eventually adopted as part of the University of Florida’s Natural Area Teaching Lab (NATL), such that access is guaranteed for posterity.
2002
| Odum succumbs to cancer on 11 September 2002 in Gainesville, Florida, at the age of 78. He has written 15 books, nearly 300 articles and was chairman for nearly 100 doctoral dissertations of which 75 were during his tenure at the University of Florida from 1970.
| A memorial service is held for Odum at the Kanapaha gardens in Gainesville in October. His ashes are scattered in the Howard T. Odum Memorial Cypress Swamp, a cypress dome near the University of Florida campus that he donated to the University for research purposes.
