G. Evelyn Hutchinson

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G. Evelyn Hutchinson bigraphy, stories - Zoologists

G. Evelyn Hutchinson : biography

January 30, 1903 – May 17, 1991

George Evelyn Hutchinson ForMemRS (January 30, 1903 – May 17, 1991) was an Anglo-American zoologist known for his studies of freshwater lakes and is the father of American limnology.

Life

Born at Cambridge in England, Hutchinson was educated at Gresham’s School, Holt and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. After two years of lecturing at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, he joined the faculty at Yale University in 1928, where he taught for the next 43 years. He became a US citizen in 1941. Hutchinson was married for a short while (approximately 1931 to 1934) to fellow biologist Grace Evelyn Pickford.Lawrence B. Slobodkin and Nancy G. Slack, , Endeavour, v.23, n.1 (1999).Patrickia Stocking Brown, , Environmental Biology of Fishes, v.41, pp.9-30 (1994).

In 1949, Hutchinson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1950 to the National Academy of Sciences. In 1984 He was awarded the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Kyoto Prize in 1986.

After his retirement, he spent much of his time in England. He served as the literary executor for the works of Rebecca West. He died in London on May 17, 1991.

He was awarded the National Medal of Science posthumously in 1991.

Publications

Apart from many research papers, Hutchinson wrote –

  • The Clear Mirror (1936)
  • The Itinerant Ivory Tower (1953)
  • A Preliminary List of the Writings of Rebecca West, 1912–51 (1957)
  • A Treatise on Limnology (1957, 1967, 1975, 1993)
Vol I Geography, Physics and Chemistry (1957)
Vol II Introduction to Lake Biology and the Limnoplankton (1967)
Vol III Limnological Botany (1975)
Vol IV The Zoobenthos (1993)
  • The Enchanted Voyage (1962)
  • The Ecological Theater and the Evolutionary Play (1965)
  • An Introduction to Population Ecology (1978)
  • The Kindly Fruits of the Earth: Recollections of an Embryo Ecologist (Yale University Press, 1979)

Sources

About him

  • Myrdene Anderson 2000. Sharing G. Evelyn Hutchinson’s fabricational noise. Sign Systems Studies 28: 388–396.
  • Nancy G. Slack, G. Evelyn Hutchinson and the Invention of Modern Ecology (Yale University Press; 2011) 457 pages
  • Nancy G. Slack, "Are research schools necessary? Contrasting models of 20th century research at Yale led by Ross Granville Harrison, Grace E. Pickford and G. Evelyn Hutchinson.", J Hist Biol., v.36, n.3, pp. 501–529 (Autumn 2003).
  • Lawrence B. Slobodkin and Nancy G. Slack, , Endeavour, v.23, n.1 (1999).
  • Hutchinson’s ratio describes the ratio of the size differences between similar species when they were living together as compared to when they were isolated.