He was founder of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and the Ecology Research Center at Miami University. He served as Director of the Institute of Ecology from 1994 through 1996. in Zoology/Ecology from the University of Georgia (1967). in Biology from Marquette University (1963), and a Ph.D. in Biology from Oakland City University (1961), a M.S. Barrett is Odum Professor of Ecology at the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia. Gene Odum is the recipient of the highest honors given in ecology ¿ the Prix de l¿Institut de la Vie and the Crafoord Prize. In 1970, the year he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, Odum gained statewide fame for demonstrating the economic value of Georgia¿s undeveloped wetlands and thereby helping amass political support for the Coastal Marshlands Protection Act.
He obtained the initial grant from the Atomic Energy Commission that established the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. in zoology with a major in ecology from the University of Illinois and served a year as resident naturalist at the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve in Rensselaerville, N.Y. Contemporary and engaging, this text brings clarity and specificity to the study of ecology in the twenty-first century. Also, a final chapter entitled "Statistical Thinking for Students of Ecology" provides a quantitative synthesis to the field of statistics. In keeping with a greater temporal/spatial approach to ecology, new chapters in landscape ecology, regional ecology, and global ecology have been added building on the levels-of-organization hierarchy. The text retains its classic holistic approach to ecosystem science, but incorporates and integrates an evolutionary approach as well. This Fifth Edition of FUNDAMENTALS OF ECOLOGY is co-authored by Odum's protege Gary Barrett and represents the last academic text Odum produced. FUNDAMENTALS OF ECOLOGY was first published in 1953 and was the vehicle Odum used to educate a wide audience about ecological science. The late Eugene Odum was a pioneer in systems ecology and is credited with bringing ecosystems into the mainstream public consciousness as well as into introductory college instruction.