George Evelyn Hutchinson (1903 – 1991)
American ecologist

Born January 30, 1903, in Cambridge, England, Hutchinson was the son of Arthur Hutchinson, a professor of mineralogy at Cambridge University, and Evaline Demeny Shipley Hutchinson, an ardent feminist. He demonstrated an early interest in flora and fauna and a basic understanding of the scientific method. In 1918, at the age of 15, he wrote a letter to the Entomological Record and Journal of Variation about a grasshopper he had seen swimming in a pond. He described an experiment he performed on the insect and included it for taxonomic identification.

In 1924, Hutchinson earned his bachelor's degree in zoology from Emmanuel College at Cambridge University, where he was a founding member of the Biological Tea Club. He then served as an international education fellow at the Stazione Zoologica in Naples from 1925 until 1926, when he was hired as a senior lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was apparently fired from this position two years later by administrators who never imagined that in 1977 the university would honor the ecologist by establishing a research laboratory in his name.

Hutchinson earned his master's degree from Emmanuel College in absentia in 1928 and applied to Yale University for a fellowship so he could pursue a doctoral degree. He was instead appointed to the faculty as a zoology instructor. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1931 and became an associate professor in 1941, the year he obtained his United States citizenship. He was made a full professor of zoology in 1945, and between 1947 and 1965 he served as director of graduate studies in zoology. Hutchinson never did receive his doctoral degree, though he amassed an impressive collection of honorary degrees during his lifetime.

Hutchinson was best known for his interest in limnology , the science of freshwater lakes and ponds. He spent most of his life writing the four-volume Treatise on Limnology, which he completed just months before his death. The research that led to the first volume—covering geography, physics, and chemistry—earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1957. The second volume, published in 1967, covered biology and plankton . The third volume, on water plants, was published in 1975, and the fourth volume, about invertebrates, appeared posthumously in 1993.

The Treatise on Limnology was among the nine books, nearly 150 research papers, and many opinion columns which Hutchinson penned. He was an influential writer whose scientific papers inspired many students to specialize in ecology . Hutchinson's greatest contribution to the science of ecology was his broad approach, which became known as the "Hutchinson school." His work encompassed disciplines as varied as biochemistry, geology, zoology, and botany. He pioneered the concept of biogeochemistry , which examines the exchange of chemicals between organisms and the environment . His studies in biogeochemistry focused on how phosphates and nitrates move from the earth to plants, then animals, and then back to the earth in a continuous cycle. His holistic approach influenced later environmentalists when they began to consider the global scope of environmental problems.

In 1957, Hutchinson published an article entitled "Concluding Remarks," considered his most inspiring and intriguing work, as part of the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology. Here, he introduced and described the ecological niche , a concept which has been the source of much research and debate ever since. The article was one of only three in the field of ecology chosen for the 1991 collection Classics in Theoretical Biology.

Hutchinson won numerous major awards for his work in ecology. In 1950, he was elected to the National Academy of Science. Five years later, he earned the Leidy Medal from the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. He was awarded the Naumann Medal from the International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology in 1959. This is a global award, granted only once every three years, which Hutchinson earned for his contributions to the study of lakes in the first volume of his treatise. In 1962, the Ecological Society of America chose him for its Eminent Ecologist Award.

Hutchinson's research often took him out of the country. In 1932, he joined a Yale expedition to Tibet, where he amassed a vast collection of organisms from high-altitude lakes. He wrote many scientific articles about his work in North India, and the trip also inspired his 1936 travel book, The Clear Mirror. Other research projects drew Hutchinson to Italy, where, in the sediment of Lago di Monterosi, a lake north of Rome, he found evidence of the first case of artificial eutrophication, dating from around 180 B.C.

Hutchinson was devoted to the arts and humanities, and he counted several musicians, artists, and writers among his friends. The most prominent of his artistic friends was English author Rebecca West. He served as her literary executor, compiling a bibliography of her work which was published in 1957. He was also the curator of a collection of her papers at Yale's Beinecke Library. Hutchinson's writing reflected his diverse interests. Along with his scientific works and his travel book, he also wrote an autobiography and three books of essays, The Itinerant Ivory Tower (1953), The Enchanted Voyage and Other Studies (1962), and The Ecological Theatre and the Evolutionary Play (1965). For 12 years, beginning in 1943, Hutchinson wrote a regular column titled "Marginalia" for the American Scientist. His thoughtful columns examined the impact on society of scientific issues of the day.

Hutchinson's skill at writing, as well as his literary interests, was recognized by Yale's literary society, the Elizabethan Club, which twice elected him president. He was also a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and served as its president in 1946.

While Hutchinson built his reputation on his research and writing, he also was considered an excellent teacher. His teaching career began with a wide range of courses including beginning biology, entomology, and vertebrate embryology. He later added limnology and other graduate courses to his areas of expertise. He was personable as well as innovative, giving his students illustrated note sheets, for example, so they could concentrate on his lectures without worrying about taking their own notes. Leading oceanographer Linsley Pond was among the students whose careers were changed by Hutchinson's teaching. Pond enrolled in Yale's doctoral program with the intention of becoming an experimental embryologist. But after one week in Hutchin son's limnology class, he had decided to do his dissertation research on a pond.

Hutchinson loved Yale. He particularly cherished his fellowship in the residential Saybrook College. He was also very active in several professional associations, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences . He served as president of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography in 1947, the American Society of Naturalists in 1958, and the International Association for Theoretical and Applied Limnology from 1962 until 1968.

Hutchinson retired from Yale as professor emeritus in 1971, but continued his writing and research for 20 more years, until just months before his death. He produced several books during this time, including the third volume of his treatise, as well as a textbook titled An Introduction to Population Ecology (1978), and memoirs of his early years, The Kindly Fruits of the Earth (1979).

He also occasionally returned to his musings on science and society, writing about several topical issues in 1983 for the American Scientist. Here, he examined the question of nuclear disarmament, speculating that "it may well be that total nuclear disarmament would remove a significant deterrent to all war." In the same article, he also philosophized on differences in behavior between the sexes: "On the whole, it would seem that, in our present state of evolution , the less aggressive, more feminine traits are likely to be of greater value to us, though always endangered by more aggressive, less useful tendencies. Any such sexual difference, small as it may be, is something on which perhaps we can build."

Several of Hutchinson's most prestigious honors, including the Tyler Award, came during his retirement. Hutchinson earned the $50,000 award, often called the Nobel Prize for conservation , in 1974. That same year, the National Academy of Sciences gave him the Frederick Garner Cottrell Award for Environmental Quality. He was awarded the Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute in 1979, the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in 1984, and the Kyoto Prize in Basic Science from Japan in 1986. Having once rejected a National Medal of Science because it would have been bestowed on him by President Richard Nixon, he was awarded the medal posthumously by President George Bush in 1991.

Hutchinson's first marriage, to Grace Evelyn Pickford, ended with a divorce in 1933. During the six weeks residence the state of Nevada then required to grant divorces, he studied the lakes near Reno and wrote a major paper on freshwater ecology in arid climates. Later that year, Hutchinson married Margaret Seal, who died in 1983 from Alzheimer's disease. Hutchinson cared for her at home during her illness. In 1985, he married Anne Twitty Goldsby, whose care enabled him to travel extensively and continue working in spite of his failing health. When she died unexpectedly in December 1990, the ailing widower returned to his British homeland. He died in London on May 17, 1991, and was buried in Cambridge.

[Cynthia Washam ]

RESOURCES

BOOKS

Hutchinson, George A. A Preliminary List of the Writings of Rebecca West. Yale University Library, 1957.

——. A Treatise on Limnology. Wiley, Vol. 1, 1957; Vol. 2, 1967; Vol. 3, 1979; Vol. 4, 1993.

——. An Introduction to Population Ecology. Yale University Press, 1978.

——. The Clear Mirror. Cambridge University Press, 1937.

——. The Ecological Theater and the Evolutionary Play. Yale University Press, 1965.

——. The Enchanted Voyage and Other Studies. Yale University Press, 1962.

——. The Itinerant Ivory Tower. Yale University Press, 1952.

——. The Kindly Fruits of the Earth. Yale University Press, 1979.

PERIODICALS

——. "Marginalia." American Scientist (November–December 1983):
639–644.

Edmondson, Y. H., ed. "G. Evelyn Hutchinson Celebratory Issue." Limnology and Oceanography 16 (1971): 167–477.

Edmondson, W. T. "Resolution of Respect." Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 72 (1991): 212–216.

Hutchinson, George E. "A Swimming Grasshopper." Entomological Record and Journal of Variation 30 (1918): 138.

——. "Marginalia." American Scientist 31 (1943): 270.

——. "Concluding Remarks." Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 53 (1991): 193–213.

——. "Lanula: An Account of the History and Development of the Lago di Monterosi, Latlum, Italy." Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 64 (1970): part 4.