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Paul Bigelow Sears: Ecologist for Our Time
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14014 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1988 |
3,018 Words |
| Author
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Linda Joyce Forristal
Linda Joyce Forristal, Life editor for The World & I, is a
member of Les Dames d'Escoffier and is on the board of the
Weston A. Price Foundation. |
Taos, New Mexico, lies halfway between the southernmost spur of the Rocky Mountains called the Sangre de Cristo range and the deep gorge of the Rio Grande. It is in this beautiful desert setting that the botanist Paul Bigelow Sears has lived for the past 18 years.
Sears is one of America's most respected and honored ecologists. He has devoted his long career to furthering our understanding of the delicately balanced ecosystem upon which our very survival depends. Over the years, his ability to clearly articulate complex environmental problems has aided immeasurably in promoting a better world and awakening colleagues and fellow citizens to critical environmental problems, past and present.
Born in Bucyrus, Ohio, on December 17, 1891, Sears graduated from Bucyrus' high school in 1908. He received his bachelor's degree in 1913, majoring in biology in 1915, from the University of Nebraska. In that year he began his teaching career as an instructor at Ohio State University.
Following military service in 1917-18, he was invited to join the department of botany at the University of Nebraska. While there, he took a leave of absence to complete his doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1922.
He brought with him to Chicago two papers as possible theses for his doctorate. One investigated the life history of dandelions, one species of which was reported to form viable seeds without pollination. The other paper studied the botanical aspects at the opening of the Northwest Territory in 1786. Federal geographers had surveyed this relatively level land by dividing it into square-mile sections and recording the location of the most suitable "witness" tree at or near each milepost. Sears wanted to examine the record of the species of these witness trees in the Ohio area to determine the distribution of vegetation before the onslaught of European settlers.
The subject of his first paper, dandelions, was selected for his thesis topic. His subsequent research fostered in him a lasting appreciation for the remarkable fact that the form of microscopic pollen grains records the parent plant just as flowers, leaves, or fruit.
A few years later, a brief assignment to the Iowa Laboratory (now called Lakeside Laboratory) at Lake Okoboji furthererd his already appreciative interest in pollen. The laboratory's excellent library accorded him his
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