Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists:
Chrono-Biographical Sketches

Cain, Stanley Adair (United States 1902-1995)
phytogeography, ecology, conservation

Photo courtesy of the Botanical Society of America.

Stanley Cain's extensive vita includes a list of involvements and honors too long to individually mention here. His early efforts distinguished him through a series of papers on American plant ecology and geography, including one of the first works making use of the technique of aerial photography (1927). In 1944 he put out the well known text Foundations of Plant Geography. After World War II he became increasingly interested in the conservation of natural resources, assuming a number of important government positions and bringing to the greater public's attention a variety of problems connected with overpopulation and overconsumption. At the University of Michigan he founded the first department of conservation in 1950 and was its chairman for eleven years; after a stint in Washington he was made director of that university's Institute for Environmental Quality. After retiring from the University of Michigan he moved to Santa Cruz, California, where he remained active into the early 1980s.

--born in Jefferson County, Indiana, on 19 June 1902.
--1924: B.S., Butler University
--1925-1931: teaches botany at Butler University
--1927: M.S., University of Chicago
--1927: publishes "Airplane Photography and Ecological Mapping" in the Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science
--1930: Ph.D. in botany, University of Chicago
--1931-1933: assistant professor, Indiana University
--1933-1935: research associate, Waterman Institute
--1935-1946: assistant professor to professor, University of Tennessee
--1938: publishes "The Species-area Curve" in American Midland Naturalist
--1940-1941: Guggenheim fellow
--1944: publishes his Foundations of Plant Geography
--1946-1950: botanist, Cranbrook Institute of Science
--1950-1961: chair, Dept. of Conservation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
--1956: receives the Botanical Society of America's Certificate of Merit
--1958: president, Ecological Society of America
--1959: honorary D.Sc., University of Montreal; publishes his Manual of Vegetation Analysis, with G. M. de Oliveira Castro
--1965: voted Michigan Conservationist of the Year
--1965-1968: Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife & Parks
--1969: receives the Ecological Society of America's Eminent Ecologist award
--1970: elected to the National Academy of Sciences
--1970-1972: director of the Institute for Environmental Quality, University of Michigan
--1972: retires from the University of Michigan
--1977: made adjunct professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz
--dies at Santa Cruz, California, on 1 April 1995.

--American National Biography, Vol. 4 (1999).
--Taxonomic Literature, Supplement III (1995).
--Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, Vol. 77(2) (1996): 80-81.
--Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists (1997).