Abstract
Biology’s macro end of the spectrum is considered in this discussion of biology of the big and Big Biology. Ecology is a central aspect to this chapter as well as systematics at the larger organizational levels such as populations and ecosystems. The directorate is still structured as it was from about 1975.
Ecology is physiology carried into the actual habitat.
Clements and Shelford
Ecology is physiology under the worst conditions.
Graduate student motto
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Notes
- 1.
Jim Edwards Interview with the author, February 18, 2009.
- 2.
NSB, “Minutes,” 178:38, June 4, 1976.
- 3.
Ibid., 180:16, May 24, 1976.
- 4.
See: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/umbs/alumni for some more recent information that notes that a new (2009) lecture hall at the University of Michigan was named for Gates and his wife. Gates was director of the Biological Station from 1971 to 1986.
- 5.
NSB, ‘Minutes,’ 180:30. See: David M. Gates, Jewel Plummer Cobb, and Saunders Mac Lane, Strengthening Environmental Programs (Washington, D.C.: National Science Board, 1976), pg. 1. Note that it is Lane, not MacLane.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Cited at: http://earthday.envirolink.org/history.html, pg. 1.
- 8.
See: Gaylord Nelson, Susan Campbell, and Paul Wozniak, Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002); and Bill Christofferson, The Man from Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Gaylord Nelson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004). See also: http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=n000033.
- 9.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1962). See, among many sites and sources on Carson and her book, http://www.nrdc.org/health/pesticides/hcarson.asp.
- 10.
- 11.
Ibid., pg. 2.
- 12.
Gates, ‘Strengthening Environmental Programs,’ pg. 1.
- 13.
Ibid., citing the ‘Challenge for the Seventies’ report.
- 14.
Program Review Office, Office of Planning and Resources Management, Division of Environmental Biology, Director’s Program Review: Environmental Biology, October 21, 1975.
- 15.
Appel, ‘Sha** Biology,’ op. cit., pg. 226.
- 16.
Ibid., pg. 380.
- 17.
‘Program Review: Environmental Biology,’ pg. 2. For more on the history of biological oceanography, inland field stations, and tropical biology in the 1960s, see Appel, ppg. 188–205.
- 18.
‘Program Review,’ pg. 2.
- 19.
Ibid., pg. 5.
- 20.
Joel B. Hagan, An Entangled Bank: The Origins of Ecosystem Ecology, (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992), pg. 1–2. As a personal aside: Hagen dedicates his book to Norm Ford and Paul Farber. The present author was Farber’s first doctoral student in the history of biology.
- 21.
Ibid., pg. 132. The ‘bug’ quotation is from Patten and cited by Hagen.
- 22.
Norbert Weiner had said, as the subtitle to his book Cybernetics (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc, 1948), that it was “control in the animal and machine.”
- 23.
Hagen, ‘Entangled Bank,’ pg. 133–136. Quotation on pg. 134. Hagen gives a clear explanation of the fundamental difference between digital and analog computers on pg. 134. However, much more detail and a fuller explanation of analog computers can be found at: http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~hsauro/Analog.htm.
- 24.
Hagen, ‘Entangled Bank,’ pg. 134.
- 25.
The IGY and Sputnik both helped this author and many others from his cohort choose science, of some stripe, as a profession.
- 26.
While there appears to be no full-length biography of Waddington, much has been written on him in smaller works. See his many obituaries, but also see: J. M. Slack, “Conrad Hal Waddington: The Last Renaissance Biologist?”, Nature Reviews Genetics (2002):889–895.
- 27.
Hagen, ‘Entangled Bank,’ pg. 164; Appel, ‘Sha** Biology,’ pg. 227.
- 28.
Dave Coleman, personal communication. See footnote further below for details on Coleman.
- 29.
Appel, ‘Sha** Biology,’ pg. 226.
- 30.
Hagen, pg. 165.
- 31.
Ibid., pg. 166.
- 32.
Ibid., 176.
- 33.
Appel, pg. 227. Emphasis added.
- 34.
I thank Dave Coleman for allowing me to cite these eight points from several of his overhead slides that were shown in a presentation he gave at the “2009 LTER All Scientists Meeting: Integrating Science and Society in a World of Constant Change,” held in Estes Park, Colorado, September 14–16, and attended by this author. I also thank the NSF for trip costs, which were kindly provided by the Foundation as an extension to the contract under which this history has been written. Some months later, Coleman’s (Emeritus Professor at the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia) history came out: Big Ecology: The Emergence of Ecosystem Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), just as the present chapter was being written. In his book, Coleman added two more contributions to ecosystem science: No. 9, “Simulation models are tools, not ends in themselves,” and No. 10, “Ecosystems are active all year round.” Each had more substance than is given here. The full text of all ten is listed in his ppg. 76–77.
- 35.
Hagen, pg. 175. All authors examined list five biomes, but in the ‘Program Review: Environmental Biology,’ pg. 8, it is stated that IBP examined six biomes. This is the only known (to this author) use of the number six. They include: grassland, deciduous forest, coniferous forest, tundra, desert, and tropical forest, and the ‘Review’ is organized around those six.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Coleman, ‘Big Ecology,’ ppg. 29–44.
- 38.
Betsy Clark, “What payoffs have resulted from biome programs in the IBP?”, pg. 4. This emphemeron is a typescript of some 15 pages in length and signed by Clark. It appears to be an overall assessment of BMS/BBS near the time she became BBS director. She provided the author with copies of these pages (4–15), but could not recall the provenance of the document.
- 39.
See the discussion in Chapter Four. The source for these data is in: NSB, “Minutes,” NSB-80-58, February 25, 1980, Appendix A, 212:31.
- 40.
See the Tyler Prize site at: http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/tylerprize/bormann_likens.html for the provenance of the quotation.
- 41.
Dave Coleman, presentation slide contents, op. cit. Coleman later repeated this phrase in his book.
- 42.
NSB, ‘Minutes,’ 181:13, July 15, 1976.
- 43.
‘Tyler Prize’ website, op. cit. Emphasis added.
- 44.
It is recommended that the interested reader begin with Sharon E. Kingsland’s The Evolution of American Ecology, 1890–2000 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), ppg. 224–228 for a brief overview of the significance of the Hubbard Brook project; an important contribution is Hagen’s work (op. cit.) at pages 181–186; see also Stephen Bocking, Ecologists and Environmental Politics: A History of Contemporary Ecology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), passim; see the Tyler Prize site; as well, see http://www.hubbardbrook.org/overview/HBEF_establishment.htm, and the Home and other pages there; and view http://www.ecostudies.org/people_sci_likens.html as Likens is as of this writing director of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; see also http://www.uvm.edu/~cmncmnt/commencement2005/?Page=Boormann.html for more on Bormann, among many other publications, both paper and online. Most especially, see Bormann and Likens’ own Pattern and Process in a Forested Ecosystem: Disturbance, Development and the Steady State Based on the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study (New York: Springer, 1994), passim.
- 45.
Coleman, ‘Big Ecology,’ pg. 83.
- 46.
National Science Foundation, Twenty-Sixth Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1976 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1977), pg. 62.
- 47.
Coleman, ‘Big Ecology,’ pg. x.
- 48.
NSF, ‘Annual Report 1976,’ pg. 62.
- 49.
Ibid., ppg. 65–66.
- 50.
National Science Foundation, Twenty-Seventh Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1977 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1978), pg. 70.
- 51.
Ibid.
- 52.
Electrophoresis is a “process by which molecules (such as proteins, DNA or RNA fragments) can be separated according to size and electrical charge by applying an electric current to them. Each kind of molecule travels through the medium at a different rate, depending on its electrical charge and molecular size.” See: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/hp.asp for the rest of the discussion on electrophoresis and a good definition of it.
- 53.
This assertion was further confirmed in an interview with retired NSF systematist Jim Rodman (done by the author May 11, 2009; more below in main text) in which he said of the growing field of biochemical systematics in the later 1970s and early 1980s that it was “changing over from so-called natural products industry…into…I’ll say, electrophoretic and eventually the DNA sequencing technology.”
- 54.
NSF, ‘Annual Report 1977,’ pg. 70. See also: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=7721903 for the grant award for the “Synthesis Series.”
- 55.
National Science Foundation, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1978 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979), pg. 71.
- 56.
See: http://www.esajournals.org/loi/ecol. In 1975 there were a total of 1,473 pages in the six annual issues. That number jumped to 1,992 by 1982.
- 57.
Data found in a one-page ephemeron dated July 28, 1983 and attributable to the Population Biology and Physiological Ecology Program (noted at the bottom of the page). From the Courtney Files held by the Historian of the NSF as of this writing.
- 58.
“Biological, Behavioral, and Social Sciences: 5 Page Issue Paper,” op. cit., ppg. 1–2.
- 59.
See Fig. 2.2, pg. 33 in Coleman, ‘Big Ecology.’ The ELM diagram is remarkably complex, but highly informative.
- 60.
NSB, “Minutes,” 209:6, November 19, 1979.
- 61.
Coleman, ‘Big Ecology,’ pg. 12. See also Hagen, ‘Entangled Bank,’ pg. 106 for something more about Eniwetok—“an early benchmark for ecosystem studies”— then to pg. 110 as Hagen follows Golley to his directorship of the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, South Carolina, a part of the SRNL (like Oak Ridge, one of the national nuclear research laboratories), and to pg. 180 and his work on the IBP.
- 62.
Kingsland, ‘Evolution of American Ecology,’ pg. 215.
- 63.
Ibid., pg. 222. Kingsland was quoting a line on pg. 139 of Golley’s own History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology: More than the Sum of the Parts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), to which the interested reader is heartily commended.
- 64.
National Science Foundation, Twenty-Ninth Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1979 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1980), pg. 56.
- 65.
Ibid., ppg. 56–58.
- 66.
Kingsland, ‘Evolution of American Ecology,’ pg. 239.
- 67.
See: http://www.lternet.edu/about/history.html, pg. 1.
- 68.
Coleman, ‘Big Ecology,’ pg. 90.
- 69.
See: http://www.lternet.edu/about/history.html, pg.1. Emphasis added.
- 70.
- 71.
- 72.
See: http://coweeta.uga.edu/.
- 73.
- 74.
There was no Internet site for North Inlet Marsh at the time of this writing.
- 75.
- 76.
See: http://www.lternet.edu/about/history.html, pg. 1; see also Coleman, pg. 91.
- 77.
National Science Foundation, Thirtieth Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1980 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981), pg. vii.
- 78.
NSB, “Minutes,” for the year 1980, passim.
- 79.
Office of Planning and Resources Management; Division of Strategic Planning and Analysis, Program Review Office; Frank B. Golley, “Program Report, Vol. 4, No. 7, October, 1980: Environmental Biology,”; pg. 1.
- 80.
Ibid.
- 81.
NSF, ‘Annual Report 1980,’ pg. 55.
- 82.
Ibid.
- 83.
It should be noted that Paul A. Weiss, discussed in Chaps. 1 and 2 herein, had been strongly influenced by Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy upon their first meeting in Vienna in 1924. It was Bertalanffy who, during the early and middle parts of the 20th century, developed general system theory (GST). See http://www.bertalanffy.org/c_26.html for a more detailed, yet brief, history of Bertalanffy, and also a mention of Weiss. It is clear how Weiss was influenced by Bertalanffy and was thus led to suggest functional versus disciplinary organization to the young NSF and its biologists in the 1950s.
- 84.
Edwards interview.
- 85.
Ibid.
- 86.
NSF, ‘Annual Report 1980,’ ppg. 56–58.
- 87.
National Science Foundation, Thirty-First Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1981 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1982), pg. 34.
- 88.
Coleman, ‘Big Ecology,’ pg. 91.
- 89.
Ibid., pg. 92.
- 90.
National Science Foundation, Thirty-Second Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1982 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983), pg. 32.
- 91.
The National Park Service (NPS) was busily installing acid rain monitoring devices in select parks, such as Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, at the time. Personal experience of the author, an NPS Ranger-Naturalist (Interpreter) there during the 1970s and 1980s.
- 92.
National Science Foundation, Thirty-Third Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1983 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1984), pg. 27. Emphasis added.
- 93.
Ibid., pg. 28.
- 94.
Coleman, ‘Big Ecology,’ pg. 98.
- 95.
Ibid., ppg. 98–99. There is a minor discrepancy in what constituted the “first” All-Scientists’ meeting as the official LTER website states that the “first” meeting was held not in 1981, but in 1985, and that in Lake Itasca, Minnesota. See: http://www.lternet.edu/about/history.html, pg. 2. The latter year is likely correct as Coleman does say “[i]n 1981, the first All-Scientists’ meeting, in effect, was held…” in his history. Emphasis added.
- 96.
NSF, ‘Annual Report 1983,’ ppg. 33, passim.
- 97.
NSB, “Minutes,” NSB-83-92, March 22, 1983, 2–83:20 (new pagination style).
- 98.
Ibid., NSB-83-373, February 16, 1984 (but the November 17–18, 1983 meeting), 11–83:9.
- 99.
BBS LRP 1984–1988, “Topics for Increasing Support,” op. cit., pg. 1. The LRP is a typescript document of seven pages.
- 100.
Marvalee Wake, “Integrative Biology: Its Promises and Its Perils,” Biology International 2001:71–74.
- 101.
BBS, “Long-Range Planning FY 86-90,” a seven-page document dated January 4, 1984. This LRP appears to be an updated version of the one cited in a footnote further above.
- 102.
National Science Foundation, Thirty-Fourth Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1984 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1985), pg. 24.
- 103.
BBS AC, “Minutes,” January 26–27, 1984, pg. 9. All AC Minutes are found in the Lateral Files of the present BIO.
- 104.
Internal evidence from various source documents.
- 105.
BBS (Syl McNinch), “Director’s Program Review: Biotic Systems and Resources Division: Background Paper,” January 10, 1984, pg. 1.
- 106.
Ibid., pg. 3.
- 107.
Ibid., pg. 4.
- 108.
Of course, annual competitions had been issued to the communities for years, but I am choosing the 1985 document to use throughout the present chapter. It was OMB 3145-0058, December 31, 1985 (aka NSF-83-75), pg. 1.
- 109.
Ibid.
- 110.
McNinch does not give the provenance of the quotation.
- 111.
National Science Foundation, Annual Report 1988 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1989), pg. 33.
- 112.
See: http://www.lternet.edu/about/history.html, pg. 2.
- 113.
See: http://www.lternet.edu/technology/background/shugart_report/shugart.htm. NB: The actual wording has been changed only slightly in this quotation in order best to reflect grammatical necessity for the present rendering.
- 114.
Ibid.
- 115.
Data extracted from a set of overhead transparency slide paper copies from a variety of sources across NSF and used at the BBS AC Meeting of May 5–6, 1989; Lateral Files at BIO.
- 116.
Ibid., pg. 4.
- 117.
BBS AC, “Minutes,” October 23–24, 1989, pg. 5.
- 118.
NSB, “Minutes,” NSB-89-58, Appendix NSB-89-55, March 15–17, 1989, 3–89:8–9.
- 119.
National Science Foundation, Annual Report 1989 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1990), ppg. 42–43.
- 120.
Appel, ‘Sha** Biology,’ pg. 216.
- 121.
Ibid., pg. 217. Appel erred in referring to it without the final “s” on Systematics. The ASC’s founding records from 1972 to 1988 are a part of the Smithsonian’s collections. See: http://siarchives.si.edu/findingaids/FARU7459.htm.
- 122.
NSF, ‘Annual Report 1976,’ pg. 62.
- 123.
Edwards interview. Emphasis added.
- 124.
See also Appel’s comments on her page 65, in particular, and other references to systematic biology in ‘Sha** Biology.’
- 125.
The quotations for several foregoing paragraphs are those of Edwards from his interview with the author.
- 126.
Ibid.
- 127.
A short biographical note concerning Allan Charles Wilson can be seen at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1682534/. He “revolutionized the study of evolution,” by, in particular, the use of molecular approaches.
- 128.
Mosaic was a product of the public relations group within NSF and was a slick magazine published from its first issue in Winter 1970, until its last in Fall 1992. The editor was Warren Kornberg at the time of the 1979 issue (see main text above), with some six issues per year then, though the publication began and ended its life with four issues per year. Arthur Fisher in his “An Appreciation of Mosaic and the Devoted People who Made it All Possible,” Mosaic (1992):52–53 (reprinted from a then contemporary issue of Sciencewriters, the newsletter of the National Association of Sciencewriters), said that “I write not to bury Mosaic, but to praise it.” The article is the best history of Mosaic in existence (personal communications between the author and Ellen Y. Weir, Christina Bartlett-Whitcom, and Susan E. Olmsted, all of NSF, and to all of whom the author offers his thanks). The founding editor, Jack Kratchman, named the publication as he did because of the “ ‘nature of the scientific effort, which relies so very much on many individual contributions to knowledge coming together to form a pattern of science theory.’ ” Quotation from the Fisher article, pg. 52. This is another example of how one can view the rise of interdisciplinarity at NSF overall. All of the Mosaic issues and articles can now be found at an online site and provide an excellent historical overview of much of the NSF’s work for over two decades; see: http://www.mosaicsciencemagazine.org/.
- 129.
Author unknown, “Molecular Evolution: A Quantifiable Contribution,” Mosaic (1979):12–21. Quotation from pg. 12.
- 130.
National Science Foundation, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1978 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979), ppg. 71–73.
- 131.
See J. Harshman, E.L. Braun, M. J. Braun, et al., “Phylogenomic Evidence for Multiple Losses of Flight in Ratite Birds,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 2008:13462–13467. The monophyly view held even as recently as 2005: Allan J. Baker, et al., ”Reconstructing the Tempo and Mode of Evolution of an Extinct Clade of Birds with Ancient DNA: The Giant Moas of New Zealand,” PNAS 2005:8257–8262.
- 132.
National Science Foundation, Annual Report 1986 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1987), pg. 14.
- 133.
Personal knowledge.
- 134.
NSF, ‘Annual Report 1979,’op. cit., pg. 57. Director Richard Atkinson also found the nematode study of interest and mentioned it as one exemplar of NSF’s support of scientific research in the country in his “Heading for the 1980’s” Director’s Statement in the ‘Annual Report 1979’; see page vii. He called it “a ‘flora and fauna’ kind of study.”
- 135.
NSF, ‘Annual Report 1982,’ op. cit., pg. 32.
- 136.
Ibid.
- 137.
Grant number EAR 0106936 was awarded to Gould, G. Goodfriend and M. G. Harasewych. The website for Cerion at the Smithsonian is http://invertebrates.si.edu/cerion/.
- 138.
Edwards interview.
- 139.
Personal communications with James Rodman, May 7, 2012. Rodman maintained a roster for those years.
- 140.
Edwards interview. It was the beginning of the era of desktop computers; this author saw his first such device in 1978, a Radio Shack brand TRS80, and took his first programming course in 1981.
- 141.
Erich Bloch Interview with Marc Rothenberg, Historian of the NSF, February 11, 2008.
- 142.
Rodman communication of May 2012.
- 143.
Jim Rodman Interview with the Author, May 11, 2009.
- 144.
A highly mathematical form of taxonomy, numerical taxonomy may be defined as “(1) A type of taxonomy using numerical similarity values, e.g. cluster analysis, to rank organisms into categories based on the degree of overall similarity, [or] (2) A way of grou** and ranking organisms into taxa according to the numerical evaluation of the affinities and similarities between taxonomic entities or units.” http://biology-online.org/dictionary/Numerical_taxonomy.
- 145.
David Schindel came in 1986 replacing Kohn as a rotator in invertebrate zoology (more on Schindel later in the main text above). Rodman overlapped with Eshbaugh for a few weeks replacing him in summer 1983. Finding a full roster of all persons in all years in the biology directorate did not prove possible at the time of this research, but may be so. The Annual Reports, for instance, listed the more senior personnel at NSF, but only down to the level of division, not program, directors until 1988, and then only down to the directorate level from then onward.
- 146.
“Cladistics is a particular method of hypothesizing relationships among organisms. Like other methods, it has its own set of assumptions, procedures, and limitations. Cladistics is now accepted as the best method available for phylogenetic analysis, for it provides an explicit and testable hypothesis of organismal relationships. The basic idea behind cladistics is that members of a group share a common evolutionary history, and are ‘closely related,’ more so to members of the same group than to other organisms. These groups are recognized by sharing unique features which were not present in distant ancestors. These shared derived characteristics are called synapomorphies.” http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/clad/clad1.html.
- 147.
Rodman interview.
- 148.
See, for instance: http://www.palaeos.org/Cladistic_controversies; Ernst Mayr, “Cladistic Analysis or Cladistic Classification?” Journal of Zoological Systematics and Evolutionary Research, 1974:94–128; http://golab.unl.edu/teaching/phylobio/papers/BrowerCladistics.pdf: the journal is that of the Willi Hennig Society, cf http://www.cladistics.org/; the German botanist Hennig created cladistics in the 1950s. One of the best examinations of the cladistics controversies is to be found in David L. Hull’s Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Chicago: The University Press, 1988), Chap. 5, “Systematists at War,” passim.
- 149.
Personal experience.
- 150.
Rodman interview.
- 151.
Ibid.
- 152.
Ibid.
- 153.
David Schindel Interview with the Author, May 11, 2009. Morphometry is simply the measurement of the outside of something, and is a sub-disciplinary area in biology, both of living and fossil creatures.
- 154.
Ibid., the interview.
- 155.
Ibid.
- 156.
The NSB was made up of a broad cross-section of scientists representing many fields, certainly not biology alone. Nonetheless, there were a number of biologists on it at all times, of course, with the few exceptions when the Board was unusually short in its total membership; such did occur. Mary Jane Osborn had a bachelor’s from U.C., Berkeley and a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Washington. She did postdoctoral work in microbiology and a decade later became a professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center School of Medicine in Farmington from 1968 and its head from 1980 onward, as of this writing. She was an NSB member from 1980–1986.
- 157.
BBS AC, ‘Minutes,’ January 26–27, 1984, pg. 1.
- 158.
Personal communication with Rodman in May 2012
- 159.
Data derived from a combination of the transcripts of both the Edwards and Schindel interviews.
- 160.
Rodman communication.
- 161.
See: http://www.cbd.int/. The UN Environment Program began work on what would become the CBD in November of 1988. By June of 1992 at the “Rio [de Janeiro] Earth Summit,” the Convention was signed and came into effect for the 168 original signatory nations by December 1993. The U.S. signed the CBD on June 4, 1993.
- 162.
This is a close paraphrase of the material at http://www.cbd.int/convention/about.shtml.
- 163.
Edwards interview.
- 164.
NSF 83-75, op. cit., pg. 2.
- 165.
Rodman communication.
- 166.
Donald W. Kaufman, Mark W. Courtney, and Penn R. Chu, “The First Three Years of NSF’s Population Biology and Physiological Ecology Program,” BioScience (1982):51–53.
- 167.
Ibid.
- 168.
Table 1 of ibid., pg. 52. Used with permission of the American Institute of Biological Sciences.
- 169.
Ibid., the article’s text, pg. 52.
- 170.
Ibid., pg. 53. Emphasis added. Wernher von Braun was often considered an opportunist, financial and otherwise. See: http://bak.lernen-aus-der-geschichte.de/resmedia/document/document/C006T05E.PDF. See also: http://www.catholicintl.com/noncatholicissues/miller.htm and http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/10/al-gores-inconvenient-truth.html, but most especially, see Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: New Left Books, 1975) and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/. Finally, the “anything goes”/opportunism notion is considered synoptically at: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/feyerabe.htm.
- 171.
Mark Courtney Interview with the Author, February 12, 2009.
- 172.
Ibid. Courtney retired from NSF in March 2008 and moved to New Mexico State University, Las Cruces. He has continued, as have others, to serve on panels, to function as a site reviewer, and in other capacities for the Foundation to the time of this writing. Jim Rodman also reminded the author of this 1993 change in his communication of May 7, 2012 thus leading to an error correction concerning dates.
- 173.
Edwards interview.
- 174.
Ibid. See this author’s comments (footnote, earlier chapter) about employment for biologists at just that point in history.
- 175.
D. W. Kaufman to F. B. Golley, February 5, 1980, Courtney Files.
- 176.
Donald W. Kaufman and Mark Courtney, PBPE, to Frank B. Golley, Director, DEB, April 1, 1980, Courtney Files. This second memo was more formal in its use of personal names and that was reflected in strong arguments presented in the text and in the two tables and a hand-drawn graph of expenditures and budgetary expectations.
- 177.
Author unknown, “[PBPE]: Past, Present and Future”; a four-page typescript ephemeron; Courtney Files. The draft document appears to be an appeal to not reduce funding to PBPE; the Program had already instituted a 66% reduction in the fall, 1982 panel as requested (by BBS?). Should a 10% increase in the planned $6M budget occur, it would lead to one of $6.6M that was desired, but a 10% reduction to $5.4M would be highly damaging, it was argued.
- 178.
NSF 83-75, pg. 2.
- 179.
From a collection of paper copies of overhead slides used in a presentation at BBS; an ephemeron; op cit.; Courtney Files.
- 180.
Mark Courtney, “Trip Report: Third International Congress of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology, University of Sussex, Brighton, England, July 4–8, 1985,” typescript of one and one-half pages in length; Courtney Files. See also: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1502-3931.1984.tb01624.x/abstract.
- 181.
Protists are mainly unicellular organisms considered by some biologists to be in a taxonomic kingdom of their own. They include a great range of unicellular algae-like organisms, protozoans, unicellular fungi-like creatures, slime molds, and others.
- 182.
Mark Courtney, “Trip Report: Foundations of Evolutionary Biology, July 11–15, 1988,” typescript of July 21, 1988; Courtney Files; quotations from pg. 3. See also: http://philosophy.osu.edu/news/logos/pdf/logossummer1988.pdf
- 183.
The Annual Report authors, influenced by the materials supplied by the division and directorate leadership, continued over the years to state that environmental biology was composed of ecology and systematics. See, as just one example, the National Science Foundation, Thirty-First Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1981, pg. 33. It was routinely repeated in slight variations annually.
- 184.
NSF 83-75, pg. 2.
- 185.
National Science Foundation, Twenty-Sixth Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1976 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1977), pg. 62. Interestingly, Sharon Kingsland, in her ‘Evolution of American Ecology,’ does not consider specifically community ecology. On the other hand, Joel Hagen considers it in some detail in his ‘Entangled Bank.’
- 186.
National Science Foundation, Twenty-Seventh Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1977 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1978), pg. 70.
- 187.
It has been said by some, that as few as 1% of all suspected microbial inhabitants of the soil have ever been cultured. While the number may still represent a mere guess, it has only been in recent years that molecular techniques have allowed for an expanding science of microbial ecology to consider not only the biota and its functions in soils and natural waters, but in other microbial ecosystems, such as the human skin and, especially in the present era, the human intestine. See, for instance, a brief overview of the history of microbial ecology at: http://www.eeescience.utoledo.edu/Faculty/Sigler/COURSES/Microbial%20Ecology%20Lecture/01%20-%20History%20of%20Microbial%20Ecology.pdf, as well as the many works by Thomas D. Brock, a modern founder of the discipline.
- 188.
National Science Foundation, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1978 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979), ppg. 69–71.
- 189.
Ibid., pg. 71.
- 190.
National Science Foundation, Thirtieth Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1980 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981), pg. 49. Emphasis added.
- 191.
Ibid., pg. 59.
- 192.
National Science Foundation, Thirty-First Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1981 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1982), pg. 33 ff.
- 193.
Ibid., pg. 36.
- 194.
Also spelled as algarroba.
- 195.
National Science Foundation, Thirty-Second Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1982 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983), pg. 33–35.
- 196.
Division of Planning and Policy Analysis, Office of Planning and Resource Management; National Science Board, Status of Science Reviews 1984, November 1983, NSB 83-360. See ppg. 68–70.
- 197.
Ibid., pg. 69.
- 198.
It was being argued, by the end of the first decade of the new millennium, that not only were many species going extinct, but so was the class of specialists that study them, taxonomists. Why? “Because we have devalued their contributions, both monetarily and scientifically,” said Craig McClain in “The Mass Extinction of Scientists Who Study Species” at www.wired.come/wiredscience/2011/01/extinction-of-taxonomists/. It would not be the first time that such a dire prediction was made, to be sure, as McClain also noted that NSF had begun a program in 1994 (see main text in later chapters) “to enhance taxonomic research [that] provides training, [but] does not create job opportunities.”
- 199.
BBS LRP, ‘Topics,’ pg. 1.
- 200.
Ibid., pg. 2.
- 201.
Emphasis in the original ‘Minutes.’
- 202.
BBS AC ‘Minutes,’ October 23–24, 1989, pg. 1.
- 203.
NSF 83-75, pg. 2.
- 204.
Adelberg is still at the ECGSC as of this writing. The well-known textbook is by R. Y. Stanier, M. Doudoroff and E. A. Adelberg, The Microbial World (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964). On a personal note, the author used different editions of the book as both an undergraduate and later as an assistant professor teaching the subject. The Center can be found online at: http://cgsc.biology.yale.edu/index.php.
- 205.
Some strains of Escherichia coli are strongly pathogenic to humans and have, in recent decades, caused a number of nationwide epidemics in hamburger meat and other food products, thus the NIH funding.
- 206.
I thank John E. Wertz, Director, ECGSC (2007 to the time of this writing) who supplied the majority of this information; email from John Wertz to the author, May 21, 2009. In that same email, Wertz supplied the author with a “running narrative” (functioning as a bibliography) from each of their grant renewal requests from NSF of the papers published in one connection or another with the Center. Some 26 are listed. The list is held by this author.
- 207.
His papers from 1950 to 2005 are held at the Smithsonian. See: http://siarchives.si.edu/findingaids/FA05-082.htm. He had interests in both living and fossil fishes: http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL391294A/James_C._Tyler. See a short biography of Tyler at: http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/resshow/perry/bios/WBFC_booksm.pdf.
- 208.
James C. Tyler to Alan E. Leviton (and Committee: Robert H. Gibbs, Jr; Robert K. Johnson; and, Roy McDiarmid), October 18, 1982. I thank Michelle L. Aldrich for making copies available to the author of this letter and the report (following footnote) from Leviton’s personal files.
- 209.
Alan E. Leviton, et al. (see note above), “Computer Applications to Collection Management in Herpetology and Ichthyology: A Survey and Report Submitted to the [NSF] and Supported by the Biological Research Resources Program at NSF,” September 15, 1982, Washington, D.C.
- 210.
Edwards interview.
- 211.
ASC Annual Meeting for 1985, Schedule of Events, Los Angeles, California, May 23, “Community Hearings on a National Biological Survey [NBS].” A cover letter was attached from Stephen R. Edwards, Executive Director of the ASC to David Kingsbury inviting his participation. Kingsbury was, however, otherwise committed and could not attend; Kingsbury to S.R. Edwards, March 13, 1985. It was the ASC itself which first formally suggested an NBS for America in 1985, but see the primary publication on it: Committee on the Formation of the National Biological Survey (Peter H. Raven, Chair), National Research Council, “A Biological Survey for the Nation” (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993). From the Preface: “The National Biological Survey will produce the map we need to avoid economic and environmental ‘train wrecks’ [such as the then current spotted owl controversy, among others] we see scattered across the country. NBS will provide the scientific knowledge America needs to balance the compatible goals of ecosystem protection and economic progress,” by Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of the Interior; pg. vii. President Bill Clinton had appointed Babbitt as Secretary just a month before the NRC report came out, but the “train wrecks” (Babbitt’s words prior his becoming Secretary) were a major challenge for Clinton just as he took office. For more on this, and a broader historical consideration, see a history of the failure to establish a lasting NBS in Frederic H. Wagner, “Whatever Happened to the National Biological Survey?” BioScience (1999):219–222. Wagner pointed out that the Canadians had first suggested such an agency as early as 1977 (his pg. 219), but the idea was quickly taken up in the U.S. and, after a long and tortured history, was established on October 1, 1993 and staffed by 1,200 Department of the Interior employees, all of whom were transferred from within DoI’s other agencies to the new NBS, though most came from the Fish and Wildlife Service. That staffing plan created severe early policy problems, but when “Republicans swept both houses of Congress” in 1994 (pg. 220) and introduced the Conservative Agenda, environmental agencies came under attack because of the belief that private property rights would be trammeled by biologists hunting for endangered species (the term “survey” was not properly understood by many in Congress). Morale dropped at NBS and by October of 1996, it was transferred to USGS as the BRD—see following note.
- 212.
The current incarnation of the “NBS” is expressed in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) NBII program: http://www.nbii.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=236&mode=2&cached=true. The USGS has been the location for biologically oriented offices and agencies for a long period of time. In 1996, the “National Biological Service” (not “Survey”) was moved into the Biological Resources Discipline (BRD) at USGS. For a brief history, going back to biological agencies as early as 1885 having a place at USGS, and an introduction to the BRD, see: http://biology.usgs.gov/pub_aff/welcome.html.
- 213.
National Science Foundation, Annual Report 1988 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1989), pg. 32. See the commentary in Chapter Four on Margaret Lindorfer, University of Oregon, and her use of the BRR-funded peptide synthesizer.
- 214.
The Association of Systematics Collections and the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, “Systematics Collections Resources for the 1990s: Results of a Survey and Workshop,” January 30, 1989, Grant No. BSR-8809937.
- 215.
Mary Clutter Interview with the Author, May 14, 2009.
- 216.
- 217.
Appel, ‘Sha** Biology,’ pg. 158.
- 218.
Ibid.; and also partially drawn from Clutter interview.
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McGraw, D.J. (2021). The Big End of the Spectrum. In: Millennial Biology: The National Science Foundation and American Biology, 1975-2005. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56367-7_4
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