George Evelyn Hutchinson was a British ecologist sometimes described as the "father of modern ecology." He contributed for more than sixty years to the fields of limnology, systems ecology, radiation ecology, entomology, genetics, biogeochemistry, a mathematical theory of population growth, art history, philosophy, religion, and anthropology. He worked on the passage of phosphorus through lakes, the chemistry and biology of lakes, the theory of interspecific competition, and on insect taxonomy and genetics, zoo-geography, and African water bugs. He is known as one of the first to combine ecology with mathematics. He became an international expert on lakes and wrote the four-volume Treatise on Limnology in 1957.
Gene Elden Likens is an American limnologist and ecologist. He co-founded the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in 1963, and founded the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York in 1983.
Raymond Laurel Lindeman was an ecologist whose graduate research is credited with being a seminal study in the field of ecosystem ecology, specifically on the topic of trophic dynamics.
Samuel Joseph McNaughton is an American ecologist and professor at Syracuse University. He received his Ph.D. at University of Texas-Austin in 1964, and was tenured to Syracuse University in 1966.
Farooq Azam is a researcher in the field of marine microbiology. He is a Distinguished Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at the University of California San Diego. Farooq Azam grew up in Lahore and received his early education in Lahore. He attended University of Punjab, where he received his B.Sc. in chemistry. He later he received his M.Sc. from the same institution. He then went to Czechoslovakia for higher studies. He received his PhD in microbiology from the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. After he received his PhD, Farooq Azam moved to California. Azam was the lead author on the paper which coined the term microbial loop. This 1983 paper involved a synthesis between a number of leaders in the (then) young field of microbial ecology, specifically, Azam, Tom Fenchel, J Field, J Gray, L Meyer-Reil and Tron Frede Thingstad.
Paul Kuykendall Dayton is a biological oceanographer and marine ecologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Dayton works in benthic ecology, marine conservation, evolution, natural history, and general ecology.
Robert Treat "Bob" Paine III was an American ecologist who spent most of his career at the University of Washington. Paine coined the keystone species concept to explain the relationship between Pisaster ochraceus, a species of starfish, and Mytilus californianus, a species of mussel.
Stephen Russell Carpenter is an American lake ecologist who focuses on lake eutrophication which is the over-enrichment of lake ecosystems leading to toxic blooms of micro-organisms and fish kills.
Bruce A. Menge is an American ocean ecologist. He has spent over forty years studying the processes that drive the dynamics of natural communities. His fields of interest include: structure and dynamics of marine meta-ecosystems, responses of coastal ecosystems to climate change, linking benthic and inner shelf pelagic communities, the relationship between scale and ecosystem dynamics, bottom-up and top-down control of community structure, recruitment dynamics, ecophysiology and sub-organismal mechanisms in environmental stress models, larval transport and connectivity, impact of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems, controls of productivity, population, community, and geographical ecology. He settled on two career goals: carrying out experiment-based field research to investigate the dynamics of rocky intertidal communities, focusing on species interactions and environmental context and how this might shape a community, and using the resulting data to test and modify theories on how communities were organized.
Margaret A. Palmer is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of Maryland and director of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). Palmer works on the restoration of streams and rivers, and is co-author of the book Foundations of Restoration Ecology. Palmer has been an invited speaker in numerous and diverse settings including regional and international forums, science-diplomacy venues, and popular outlets such as The Colbert Report.
Deborah K. Steinberg is an American Antarctic biological oceanographer who works on interdisciplinary oceanographic research programs. Steinberg's research focuses on the role that zooplankton play in marine food webs and the global carbon cycle, and how these small drifting animals are affected by changes in climate.
Robert Henry Peters was a Canadian ecologist and limnologist that championed a predictive approach to science in order to make quantitative models relevant to public needs. He proposed that predictive limnology could be an effective tool for producing empirical models about relevant processes and organisms in lakes. He was a Professor in the Biology Department of McGill University, Montreal, Canada from 1974 to his death in 1996.
Sarah E. Hobbie is an American ecologist, currently at the University of Minnesota, a National Academy of Sciences Fellow for Ecology, Evolution and Behavior in 2014 and a formerly Minnesota McKnight Land-Grant Professor.
Emily S. Bernhardt is an American ecosystem ecologist, biogeochemist, and professor at Duke University.
Amy D. Rosemond is an American aquatic ecosystem ecologist, biogeochemist, and Distinguished Research Professor at the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia. Rosemond studies how global change affects freshwater ecosystems, including effects of watershed urbanization, nutrient pollution, and changes in biodiversity on ecosystem function. She was elected an Ecological Society of America fellow in 2018, and served as president of the Society for Freshwater Science from 2019-2020.
James Elser is an American ecologist and limnologist. He is Director & Bierman Professor of Ecology, Flathead Lake Biological Station, University of Montana and research professor, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University. He is known for his work in ecological stoichiometry. In 2019, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Robert George Wetzel was an American limnologist and ecologist, a specialist in freshwater ecology, chemistry, and environmental protection. Wetzel served as the general secretary and treasurer of the International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology for 37 years in addition to his tenure as president of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (1980-1981).
Shahid Naeem is an ecologist and conservation biologist and is a Lenfest Distinguished professor and chair in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology at Columbia University. Naeem is the author of Biodiversity, Ecosystem Functioning, and Human Well-Being, and has published over 100 scientific articles.
Charles G. Post is an American ecologist, documentary filmmaker, photographer and podcaster. He is best known for his photography work and as producer and film director of Sky Migrations, Return of the Desert Bighorn and Golden. His photography and writing work have appeared on National Geographic, Outside, Yeti and Sierra Magazine. Post is co-founder and Vice President of The Nature Project (501c3), a non-profit organization with the focus on helping underserved youth.
David M. Post is a research scientist and academic administrator. He is currently a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and the Vice President ., Dean of Faculty, and Visiting Wong Ngit Liong Professor at Yale-NUS College, the first liberal arts college in Singapore. Post is an aquatic ecologist who studies food webs, evolution, and stable isotopes in lakes and rivers in Connecticut and Kenya.
