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| International Society for the Advancement of Emergy Research (ISAER) Emergy Society |
Howard T. Odum: History and Legacy
By M.T. Brown, C.A.S. Hall, S.E. Jorgensen and other colleagues of HT’s
Edited and condensed by E. C. Odum
In this section we share the history and legacy of HT Odum. He is the virtual originator of the
International Society for the Advancement of Emergy Research (the Emergy Society). He was an
individual who had a larger than life presence and impact on so many of us. Howard T. Odum (or HT
as he wished to be called) was a very special scientist and teacher who often walked alone but with
several hundred of us following along behind as best we could. He left an incredible legacy: a massive
set of ideas, theories, and teachings, as well as a suite of accomplishments that few can begin to
approach in volume, let alone originality. His approach to science and teaching and his more than
ethical conduct (which was probably the result of his upbringing ) provide us a standard to which we
can aspire, even if they are most difficult to emulate.
Following his Doctorate from Yale in 1951, H.T. Odum’s 52-year academic career was
punctuated by six moves that carried him from Yale to Florida, to North Carolina, to Texas, to
Puerto Rico, back to North Carolina and finally back to Florida where in 1971 he settled down as
Graduate Research Professor. With each move from one academic institution to another, the
opportunities for research and teaching that presented themselves shaped his work and provided a
rich and fertile ground for development of his theories and philosophies. He encountered new
ecosystems and new environmental issues, at each new institution, to which he seemed infinitely
adaptable. Even though the systems and issues were very different, his “top-down, systems
approach” and his focus on the similarities of adaptation of ecosystems and components reduced
their complexity to manageable dimensions. Through his energetics approach he found similar
components and similar processes in all systems at all levels of organization.
H.T. Odum was the recipient of numerous awards, among them:
Phi Beta Kappa
George Mercer Award, Ecological Society of America
Prize Institute de la Vie, Paris 1976
Distinguished Service, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Distinguished Service, American Institute of Biological Sciences
The Crafoord Prize, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1987
University of Florida Presidential Medal, 1976
Distinguished Service, University of Puerto Rico
Honorary Doctor of Science, Ohio State University, 1995.
Elected Member Swedish Royal Academy of Science
Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Florida, 2003
H.T. Odum was an extraordinary individual. His love of teaching, his creative and imaginative way of
viewing the biosphere, his grasp of so many different fields of science, and his drive and unbounded
energy have left many students, colleagues, and associates awestruck. His unique way of
understanding the biosphere and human’s place within it, his gift to us all, will endure and expand as
it is more fully understood by this and succeeding generations. He has left us a legacy of many
hundreds of books and scientific publications, over 100 masters and PhD students, and even a movie
or two. But, far beyond these tangible remnants of his scientific inquiry is the devotion to his
students, close associates, family and to human kind. In his own words (in the Prosperous Way Down
Odum and Odum, 2001, the last book published while he was alive written with his wife Betty), “As
sometimes attributed to past cultures, people may again find glory in being an agent of the earth.” H.
T. Odum was an agent of the earth, striving always to teach good stewardship and a profound
understanding and respect for the cycles, hierarchies and especially energetics of the biosphere.
Through the MACROSCOPE: the legacy of H.T. Odum
In the world of science that we live in there are two kinds of people: Odumites and others. This is not
simply an observation by us or the others whom we believe would universally agree, but also a
statement often made by many other ecologists and scientists with only an indirect
connection to Odum. We might add, even our own students would agree with the observation. It is
usually followed with the explanatory statement that “ ... almost everyone who has been touched by
the ideas and especially the presence of H.T. Odum was never quite the same again”. His classes
were often so intellectually exciting that we could think of almost nothing else. Where even his
simplest statements would ripple through our intellect causing waves of excitement and discussions
that would carry us well into the night. Many of us felt that we were standing next to some huge
dynamo, with our hair standing on end from the induced currents. Somehow, after being immersed in
HT’s ideas, theories, and philosophies we felt as if we stood on a taller hill, looking farther with a
broader overview of the surrounding landscape. Most of us still feel that way. So we often used the
term “Odumite” to describe those of us who had been touched by what we saw as the genius of H.T.
Odum.
On the other hand, those who have expressed almost open hostility to the ideas and theories of HT
often used the term, “Odumite” in a derogatory manner. In fact, HT disliked the term, because it
made him, instead of his ideas, the center. As he stated on numerous occasions, ideas are bigger
than an individual and when they are identified with an individual they can easily be dismissed ... not
because the ideas are wrong, but because the individual is not well liked. When people focus on the
individual instead of the idea, it becomes an issue of personalities and egos, instead of discussion
and collegial discourse. So it was often easy to brand those of us who were ‘’followers” of H.T. Odum
as Odumites, and the belief in Odum’s ideas as “Odumania” (see for example Månsson and McGlade,
1993). In somewhat of a reverse sting, some ecologists have identified “systems ecology” as the
culprit that has moved ecology away from an organismal orientation and therefore its underpinnings
in the dual realities of natural history and community ecology. Since H.T. Odum was one of the main
proponents of systems ecology, his ideas were blasphemous to them and those of us that believed
them were Odumites, not to be trusted in a world where reductionism and small scale biology held
rein. To most of us however, systems ecology was not the problem, but the solution. In the words of
HT ... “If the bewildering complexity of human knowledge developed in the twentieth century is to be
retained and well used, unifying concepts are needed to consolidate the understanding of systems of
many kinds and to simplify the teaching of general principles.” (Odum, 1994)
Ecology should be, at least in our view, not just about species and populations but about systems and
about synthesis, about how systems of different scales operate along common principles and are
constrained by common energetics, and about how plant and animal populations are largely
determined over space and time by environmental factors. It is through ecology and an understanding
of the systems, hierarchies, and dynamic behavior of the natural world that we might gain an
understanding of our place within it. Nature is about all levels of organization and to us it is
problematic that ecology is often taught within biology departments, where species-or population-
oriented biologists represent the highest level of complexity.
Odum was a systems ecologist, no doubt. He worked tirelessly throughout his career to firmly
establish it as a science, but more than that, to expand and advance the science. Believing that
diversity begets innovation, he embraced the approaches of others (more so in his later life)
suggesting that the field was stronger as a result of the diversity of approaches and systems
languages of others.
Peculiarly, some ecologists said that he was not a believer in Darwin’s theories. In fact Odum believed
in natural selection operating at every level all the time and relentlessly. He was perhaps the
strongest Darwinian we knew.
His Darwinian perspective even extended to his own ideas, for he said on more than one occasion “let
the future sort out my good ideas from those that are not so good”. He, more than most, worked
throughout his career orchestrating several interests into a complex symphony of field ecology,
experimental measurement, theory, and policy. Over the span of 50 plus years, this symphony
resulted in hundreds of publications that did not always fit neatly into academic departments or
disciplines. Beginning with ecological studies of Silver Springs and the coral reefs of Eniwetok
Atoll in the Pacific, and continuing with the Bays of Texas’ Gulf coast, the Luquillo Forest of Puerto
Rico, the saltmarshes of North Carolina’s coast and finally the cypress wetlands of Florida, Odum’s
ecology was always big scale, experimental, and measurement oriented. These studies yielded
however, theory, and a macroscopic, systems approach oriented toward understanding the “whole”
and placing humanity smack in the middle. There was no question in his mind that humans were part
of these systems or that humans ultimately controlled them...the only question was, could Odum
convince the rest of humanity (especially ecologists) that this was so.
In many respects the division of H.T. Odum’s life work into several sections having different subject
content is artificial at best, and in fact might be the antitheses of what he would have wished.
Throughout his life, there was a continuum of thought, research, scientific inquiry, and generation of
theory along several threads that were never abandoned or left behind. His life’s work was a tapestry
of projects, both large and small, woven together into a collective whole that was far greater than the
sum of its individual parts. At times Odum worked with whole ecosystems taking measurements and
developing new techniques for measuring production, respiration and the transfer of energy through
trophic networks. Even so, as Scott Nixon has noted, his knowledge of the taxonomy of individual
species was often profound. At other times he worked with microcosms and simulation models, trying
to emulate the larger world in aggregate. He was an engineer, when necessary, devising his own
instruments when need arose. At times he was an artist, conjuring up diagrams and pictures to get
his points across when words were not enough. In all cases, Odum was striving for clarity out of the
“the bewildering complexity of human knowledge developed in the twentieth century...,” trying to
‘see’ the essence of nature and man-nature interactions, the pervasiveness of energy relations, and
to develop understanding.
He had a single-minded drive for understanding. It is impossible to recall a time when he was at a
loss for a “systems” observation as to why something was as it was nor a time when he could not find
something positive to say to a junior colleague or caught without an encouraging word for one of his
students These are the things that most shaped our image of H.T. Odum, as scientist and teacher.
These represent the legacy that he left us.
In the sections that follow are captured some of the history and brilliance that was H.T. Odum, and to
show the diversity and yet single mindedness that occupied his life.
1. What we know about the young Howard Odum
Howard Thomas Odum was born in 1923 to Howard Washington and Anna Louise Odum in Chapel Hill
North Carolina. He was the third child of the elder Odums following his Brother Eugene (b. 1913) and
sister Mary Francis (b. 1919). Their father was a forward thinking and creative sociologist who in
many ways defined and redefined the science of sociology in the South. Their mother was a very
intelligent and cultured woman. Their house was often full of the intense conversation of other
intellectuals visiting the Odums, and it is clear that the intellectual environment for the young Odums
must have been extremely interesting.
Without detracting from the accomplishments of Eugene Odum, perhaps the more well known of the
two remarkable brothers, Mary Frances, their sister, often referred to HT as “the gifted one”, but went
on to say “his habit of very rapid speech sometimes meant that his ideas were lost on others”. HT
commented, on occasion, that his most important early influences were “The boy electrician,” a love
of birds inherited from his brother Gene, and the influence of the University of North Carolina biologist
Robert Coker. A warm and wonderful rendering of Gene and HT’s early years can be found in Betty
Jean Craige’s “Eugene Odum, Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist” (University of Georgia
Press, 2002) A number of personal perspectives on HT from former students, his wife, Betty, and
colleagues can be found in the last section of “Maximum Power” (Hall, 1996).
Howard T. Odum was essentially an academician throughout his life. He graduated from the
University of North Carolina in 1946 majoring in biology. He served in the Air Force during World War II
as a tropical meteorologist, where undoubtedly he gained his basic interest in large systems and the
energetics behind them. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University under the distinguished ecologist
G. Evelyn Hutchinson in 1951 (and where he was also influenced by Gordon Riley). He taught at the
University of Florida (1950–1954), Duke (1954–1956 ), University of Texas (where he directed the
Marine Station from 1956 to 1963), and was Chief Scientist at the Puerto Rico Nuclear Center (1963–
1966). He returned to teaching at the University of North Carolina (1966–1970) and finally at the
University of Florida (1970–2002).
2. Early and continuing interests: Biogeochemistry
H.T. Odum’s Ph.D. dissertation under G.Evelyn Hutchensen at Yale University dealt with the global
strontium cycle. In letters home to his parents and brother Gene (unpublished) he at first showed
tremendous excitement about the research possibilities and the fact that his work was related to
important “happenings” of the time. Later under the drudgery of analysis after analysis of samples, he
wrote that it had lost some of its excitement, but that once the measurements were finished, he was
sure it would once again stimulate his interests. In the end, it is obvious that HT never lost his
interest for global cycles. These early measurements and the insights they provided seemed to
incubate over the years and surfaced again with his interests in lead cycles in the environment and in
his most interesting work in the late 1990’s and early part of this century, relating biogeochemical
cycles to energy hierarchies and economic cycles.
3. Ecosystems and metabolism
Throughout Odum’s career he returned again and again to ecosystem level studies. His first
ecosystem studies were conducted on the Silver Springs in the early 1950s. Kemp and Boynton
describe how he devised a means of measuring total ecosystem primary production and respiration
and quantitatively evaluate energy flow through the ecosystem. Following closely on the heels of
the Silver Springs study, Odum teamed up with his brother Gene to measure productivity and
estimate trophic structure of a coral reef community in the Pacific. From the coral reefs of the
Pacific, HT descended on the Texas Coast where he was director of the University of Texas’
Institute of Marine Sciences at Port Aransas (1956–1964). Here, he undertook the daunting task of
measuring the Texas Bay ecosystems to determine whole ecosystem metabolism while
administering and supporting a faculty that was undertaking many traditional studies
in biology and fisheries. While it is hard to pinpoint exactly when Odum struck on ideas (for they
often crop up in very early writings as almost random musings), it was during his years at Texas
that several threads of his career appeared, including: Ecological Economics, Ecological
Engineering and the use of microcosms for ecosystem emulation. In addition, his use of the
symbolic systems language he sometimes called “energetics” blossomed with the “invention” of
the “storage tank” that Robert Byers attributed to the water storage tanks that dotted the landscape
of North Carolina during Odum's childhood and that rural Texas communities used for public water
supply.
Following Texas, Odum turned his attention to the rainforests of Puerto Rico’s Luquillo Experimental
Forest. As Chief Scientist at the University of Puerto Rico’s Puerto Rican Nuclear Center, he
conducted experimental irradiation of the rain forest and once again engaged in the massive
undertaking of measuring whole ecosystem metabolism. In this case Odum constructed an enclosure
out of plastic sheets to enclose and thus measure CO2 concentrations in inflow and outflow air
streams to calculate production and respiration. Odum’s work there, was far more than mere
metabolism measurements, as it was manifested in his edited volume “A Tropical Rainforest”, a
gigantic book of 1667 pages that is chocked full of data, pictures, diagrams and Odum insights.
Next Odum turned his attention to the cypress swamps of the Florida flatwoods. With a million dollars
from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Science Foundation, he assembled more than a
dozen scientists and even more graduate students to study the use of cypress wetlands for waste
water recycle. Every aspect of the ecosystems was studied from soil microbiota to insects, to birds
and mammals. Measurements were made of whole ecosystem primary production, evapotranspiration
and respiration, as well as complete nutrient and hydrological budgets. The book that resulted was
“Cypress Swamps”, edited by Kathy Ewel and Odum. While the book gives details of “... technical
aspects of nutrient cycling mechanisms, productivity rates, producer and consumer diversity
patterns and distribution of microorganisms ..., Cypress Swamps also describes the role of cypress
wetlands within the larger landscape and underscores the usefulness of wetlands as an interface
ecosystem.”
“Ecological Microcosms”, by Beyers and Odum, is“a big book about small worlds.”
It encapsulates in an unselfconscious way the entire spectrum of H.T. Odum’s dynamic and diverse
professional life, from its roots in basic ecology to the application of emergy to world-scale social
and environmental problems.”
To say Odum was a systems scientist is an understatement. Viewing his life’s work as a body of
information, theory and application, it is easy to see that his passion was systems ... any scale, any
size, any type. Odum’s book, Systems Ecology (Odum, 1983) and later renamed Ecological and
General Systems (1994) was a tour-de-force of 644 pages describing the physical, kinetic, energetic,
cybernetic, and mathematical underpinnings of his approach and drawing comparisons with over 50
other systems languages.
Odum felt strongly that the broadest spectrum of the population as possible needed to understand
systems, not only their organization, but more importantly how they behaved. People needed to
understand how systems changed...how they grew, died, reacted to impulses, or reorganized to
accommodate new conditions if they were to transform policy making driven by qualitative guesses
about outcomes, to quantitative predictions based on system energetics. Odum worked through out
his career to develop a systems language that would make the abstract equations of the
mathematical modelers concrete, a symbol language that would allow comparison between systems
so that commonalties were evident. While President of the International Society for Systems
Sciences, he called for a project to translate models of all scales into systems diagrams so that
everyone could better understand them. Odum’s symbol language was also a simulation tool.
Diagrams drawn with the symbols were directly translated into mathematical equations, programmed
in one of several programming languages and simulated. There exists today a plethora of papers and
books that describe the language and the hundreds (probably thousands) of models that were
developed.
Odum’s systems theory was grounded in thermodynamics. Yet he was quick to point out where
thermodynamics got off the track because of its lack of recognition that all energy is NOT the same
form and utility and thus not all forms can be compared directly. Odum was convinced that open
systems thermodynamics required a concept of energy quality that took into account the differences
in energy form. A major aspect of Odium’s open systems thermodynamics was the Maximum Power
principle (later renamed the Maximum Empower Principle). As he stated in his 1994 book, Ecological
and General Systems... “Maximization of useful power may be the most general design principle of
self-organizing systems.” Odum proposed the maximum empower principle as a fourth law of
thermodynamics and later, two other systems properties as the 5th and 6th laws
5. Ecological engineering
Engineering is generally perceived and presented as a “hard” field. The term hard has several
meanings in this context. Most engineering, is in fact “hard” in that it uses concrete, steel and energy
intensive procedures to solve problems. Some say engineering is hard because it uses mathematics
and physics that are often difficult to comprehend. But the real sense of engineering is not that it is
about concrete or about mathematics but instead about problem solving. Since the 1950s, and even
today, one of the largest single engineering problems has been waste treatment. The engineering
solution to waste treatment has typically been “hard” ... concrete, steel and energy intensive
technology. Yet there was, and is, a softer approach. From the early 1950s Odum envisioned a
partnership of humanity and nature and since he was keenly aware that nature had no wastes, but
instead recycled everything, he was quick to propose a new engineering paradigm “Ecological
Engineering” that capitalized on the recycle potential of natural ecosystems.
6. Environment and society
One of the most important insights that H.T. Odum had was simply to consider humans as a legitimate
object of ecological inquiry. This caused him to run into two academic bramble patches
simultaneously. Many ecologists, focused on the sanctity of their beloved nature, were used to (and
still do) view humans as something outside of nature, rather than as a legitimate part of a new,
evolving nature. On the other hand the study of humanity, in the view of many, is properly done only
under the aegis of social scientists, who trumpet “free-will” and thus no causality and especially no
determinism. In contradiction to both of these world views Odum believed... “Much of the earth is
occupied by humanity, either as part of ecosystems or interfacing as users and controllers. Where
humans comprise a major part, new kinds of systems evolve with human culture at the hierarchical
center. Information processing, social structure, symbolism, money, political power, and war become
important components along with the vegetation, consumer organisms, and the inanimate work of the
biosphere.” ...
7. Ecology and economics
Of all the social sciences, economics affects us the most. Odum made some very explicit initial
observations that are the essence of two principles of economics that are missed by virtually all
economists. These are that money is not a measure of value, but rather simply a means of exchange.
Another important insight from Odum is that the flow of energy in properly functioning ecosystems
was critical to economic activity. He did not believe that the ways that pollutants impacted nature
were “externalities” but rather an erosion of the necessary capital machinery provided by nature that
was necessary for all economic activity.
8. Emergy analysis
Emergy is probably the least understood and the most widely criticized of Odum’s ideas and
concepts. The concept developed over a 30 odd year period of time beginning in the early 1970’s and
culminated in the publication of his book, Environmental Accounting. (Odum, 1996). Odum defined
emergy as the energy required to make something. Since it takes resources to make resources, it
was not difficult to suggest that the true value of something was the resources required to make it,
instead of the utility one might get from using it. Central to the concept of emergy was the concept of
energy quality...all energy is not the same. A joule of sunlight is not the same as a joule of oil. Thus a
significant contribution of the emergy theory is its revelation of the comparative qualities of energy.
Emergy evolved throughout the three decades of its development. For a brief period it was called
embodied energy until it was realized that others in the field were using the term to describe a
different concept. David Scienceman, a visiting Australian physicist, contributed the concept of
energy memory and the word emergy was born in the late 1970s. Soon to follow was the word
transformity which replaced “energy transformation ratio” and the concept of empower which was
emergy per time. At first emergy was expressed as coal emergy but this soon gave way to solar
emergy when it was noted that energies with lower qualities than coal had magnitudes less than one.
It was a natural to use emergy to evaluate all sorts of systems. When first developed, the concept
was applied to energy systems, but soon Odum and colleagues were evaluating ecosystems
agricultural systems, and human dominated systems. Transformities (ratio of emergy required to
make something to the energy of the product) for products of every sort were calculated and tables
of transformities compiled. By the turn of the century Odum and colleagues had begun producing a
series of folios where emergy transformities were compiled and published for use by others.
9. A prosperous way down
If indeed the oil-gas world is a one shot deal, if humanity has built up far more infrastructure and
human numbers than can be supported without the influx of this very special stuff petroleum, what
kind of a future is in store for us? The response of most is to say “OK, we need to figure out some
other energy source, solar panels, windmills, nuclear or whatever”. Howard Odum thought that oil was
special, that he was living through a one shot run of history when fuel would be cheap. Odum always
thought that if a full, comprehensive analysis was made of all the necessary inputs then there would
be few if any other energy sources that could match petroleum, which after all is the net production
of some ancient ecosystems. Some thirty years after the “energy crunches” of the 1970s, despite a
great deal of effort, there is no obvious competition for petroleum (or coal) on the horizon, at least at
the scale required. Some alternatives, such as nuclear, look even less immediately promising. We do
not know exactly when we will “run out of cheap oil” but it is almost certainly within a generation and
maybe much sooner So the last best thing Odum left us was a plan for dealing with what he believed
to be an inevitable future in the book “A Prosperous Way Down”
10. Philosophical overview of the contributions of H.T. Odum
It is certainly much too early to understand the full contribution of Howard Odum’s science to the long
haul, but this is a good place to start this effort.
References
Hall, C.A.S., Tharakan, P.J., Hallock, J., Cleveland, C., Jefferson, M., in press. Hydrocarbons and the
evolution of human culture. Nature.
Craige, B.J., 2002. Eugene Odum, Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist. University of Georgia
Press, Athens.
Odum, Odum, 2001. A Prosperous Way Down. University Press of Colorado. Boulder.
Månsson, B.Å., McGlade, J.M., 1993. Ecology thermodynamics and Odum’s conjectures. Oecologia 93,
582–596.
Odum, H.T., 1994. Ecological and General Systems. University Press of Colorado, Niwot, CO.
Hall, C.A.S. (Ed.), 1996. Maximum Power: the Ideas and Applications of H.T. Odum. University Press of
Colorado, Niwot, CO.
Odum, H.T., Wojcik, W., Pritchard Jr., L., Ton, S., Delfino, J.J., Wojcik, M., Leszczynski, S., Patel, J.D.,
Doherty, S.J., Stasik, J. (Eds.), 2000. Heavy Metals in the Environment, Using Wetlands for Their
Removal. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 326 pp.
Odum, H.T., 1953. Environment Power and Society. Wiley, New York.
Odum, H.T., 1983. Systems Ecology: An Introduction. Wiley, 644 pp
Odum, H.T., 1996. Environmental Accounting. Wiley, New York.
Odum, H.T. , 2007. Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-first Century. Columbia University
Press. New York, 418 pp
Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences
Box 116350, University of Florida, Gainesville
FL 32611-6350, USA
*
By M.T. Brown, C.A.S. Hall, S.E. Jorgensen and other colleagues of HT’s
Edited and condensed by E. C. Odum
In this section we share the history and legacy of HT Odum. He is the virtual originator of the
International Society for the Advancement of Emergy Research (the Emergy Society). He was an
individual who had a larger than life presence and impact on so many of us. Howard T. Odum (or HT
as he wished to be called) was a very special scientist and teacher who often walked alone but with
several hundred of us following along behind as best we could. He left an incredible legacy: a massive
set of ideas, theories, and teachings, as well as a suite of accomplishments that few can begin to
approach in volume, let alone originality. His approach to science and teaching and his more than
ethical conduct (which was probably the result of his upbringing ) provide us a standard to which we
can aspire, even if they are most difficult to emulate.
Following his Doctorate from Yale in 1951, H.T. Odum’s 52-year academic career was
punctuated by six moves that carried him from Yale to Florida, to North Carolina, to Texas, to
Puerto Rico, back to North Carolina and finally back to Florida where in 1971 he settled down as
Graduate Research Professor. With each move from one academic institution to another, the
opportunities for research and teaching that presented themselves shaped his work and provided a
rich and fertile ground for development of his theories and philosophies. He encountered new
ecosystems and new environmental issues, at each new institution, to which he seemed infinitely
adaptable. Even though the systems and issues were very different, his “top-down, systems
approach” and his focus on the similarities of adaptation of ecosystems and components reduced
their complexity to manageable dimensions. Through his energetics approach he found similar
components and similar processes in all systems at all levels of organization.
H.T. Odum was the recipient of numerous awards, among them:
Phi Beta Kappa
George Mercer Award, Ecological Society of America
Prize Institute de la Vie, Paris 1976
Distinguished Service, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Distinguished Service, American Institute of Biological Sciences
The Crafoord Prize, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 1987
University of Florida Presidential Medal, 1976
Distinguished Service, University of Puerto Rico
Honorary Doctor of Science, Ohio State University, 1995.
Elected Member Swedish Royal Academy of Science
Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Florida, 2003
H.T. Odum was an extraordinary individual. His love of teaching, his creative and imaginative way of
viewing the biosphere, his grasp of so many different fields of science, and his drive and unbounded
energy have left many students, colleagues, and associates awestruck. His unique way of
understanding the biosphere and human’s place within it, his gift to us all, will endure and expand as
it is more fully understood by this and succeeding generations. He has left us a legacy of many
hundreds of books and scientific publications, over 100 masters and PhD students, and even a movie
or two. But, far beyond these tangible remnants of his scientific inquiry is the devotion to his
students, close associates, family and to human kind. In his own words (in the Prosperous Way Down
Odum and Odum, 2001, the last book published while he was alive written with his wife Betty), “As
sometimes attributed to past cultures, people may again find glory in being an agent of the earth.” H.
T. Odum was an agent of the earth, striving always to teach good stewardship and a profound
understanding and respect for the cycles, hierarchies and especially energetics of the biosphere.
Through the MACROSCOPE: the legacy of H.T. Odum
In the world of science that we live in there are two kinds of people: Odumites and others. This is not
simply an observation by us or the others whom we believe would universally agree, but also a
statement often made by many other ecologists and scientists with only an indirect
connection to Odum. We might add, even our own students would agree with the observation. It is
usually followed with the explanatory statement that “ ... almost everyone who has been touched by
the ideas and especially the presence of H.T. Odum was never quite the same again”. His classes
were often so intellectually exciting that we could think of almost nothing else. Where even his
simplest statements would ripple through our intellect causing waves of excitement and discussions
that would carry us well into the night. Many of us felt that we were standing next to some huge
dynamo, with our hair standing on end from the induced currents. Somehow, after being immersed in
HT’s ideas, theories, and philosophies we felt as if we stood on a taller hill, looking farther with a
broader overview of the surrounding landscape. Most of us still feel that way. So we often used the
term “Odumite” to describe those of us who had been touched by what we saw as the genius of H.T.
Odum.
On the other hand, those who have expressed almost open hostility to the ideas and theories of HT
often used the term, “Odumite” in a derogatory manner. In fact, HT disliked the term, because it
made him, instead of his ideas, the center. As he stated on numerous occasions, ideas are bigger
than an individual and when they are identified with an individual they can easily be dismissed ... not
because the ideas are wrong, but because the individual is not well liked. When people focus on the
individual instead of the idea, it becomes an issue of personalities and egos, instead of discussion
and collegial discourse. So it was often easy to brand those of us who were ‘’followers” of H.T. Odum
as Odumites, and the belief in Odum’s ideas as “Odumania” (see for example Månsson and McGlade,
1993). In somewhat of a reverse sting, some ecologists have identified “systems ecology” as the
culprit that has moved ecology away from an organismal orientation and therefore its underpinnings
in the dual realities of natural history and community ecology. Since H.T. Odum was one of the main
proponents of systems ecology, his ideas were blasphemous to them and those of us that believed
them were Odumites, not to be trusted in a world where reductionism and small scale biology held
rein. To most of us however, systems ecology was not the problem, but the solution. In the words of
HT ... “If the bewildering complexity of human knowledge developed in the twentieth century is to be
retained and well used, unifying concepts are needed to consolidate the understanding of systems of
many kinds and to simplify the teaching of general principles.” (Odum, 1994)
Ecology should be, at least in our view, not just about species and populations but about systems and
about synthesis, about how systems of different scales operate along common principles and are
constrained by common energetics, and about how plant and animal populations are largely
determined over space and time by environmental factors. It is through ecology and an understanding
of the systems, hierarchies, and dynamic behavior of the natural world that we might gain an
understanding of our place within it. Nature is about all levels of organization and to us it is
problematic that ecology is often taught within biology departments, where species-or population-
oriented biologists represent the highest level of complexity.
Odum was a systems ecologist, no doubt. He worked tirelessly throughout his career to firmly
establish it as a science, but more than that, to expand and advance the science. Believing that
diversity begets innovation, he embraced the approaches of others (more so in his later life)
suggesting that the field was stronger as a result of the diversity of approaches and systems
languages of others.
Peculiarly, some ecologists said that he was not a believer in Darwin’s theories. In fact Odum believed
in natural selection operating at every level all the time and relentlessly. He was perhaps the
strongest Darwinian we knew.
His Darwinian perspective even extended to his own ideas, for he said on more than one occasion “let
the future sort out my good ideas from those that are not so good”. He, more than most, worked
throughout his career orchestrating several interests into a complex symphony of field ecology,
experimental measurement, theory, and policy. Over the span of 50 plus years, this symphony
resulted in hundreds of publications that did not always fit neatly into academic departments or
disciplines. Beginning with ecological studies of Silver Springs and the coral reefs of Eniwetok
Atoll in the Pacific, and continuing with the Bays of Texas’ Gulf coast, the Luquillo Forest of Puerto
Rico, the saltmarshes of North Carolina’s coast and finally the cypress wetlands of Florida, Odum’s
ecology was always big scale, experimental, and measurement oriented. These studies yielded
however, theory, and a macroscopic, systems approach oriented toward understanding the “whole”
and placing humanity smack in the middle. There was no question in his mind that humans were part
of these systems or that humans ultimately controlled them...the only question was, could Odum
convince the rest of humanity (especially ecologists) that this was so.
In many respects the division of H.T. Odum’s life work into several sections having different subject
content is artificial at best, and in fact might be the antitheses of what he would have wished.
Throughout his life, there was a continuum of thought, research, scientific inquiry, and generation of
theory along several threads that were never abandoned or left behind. His life’s work was a tapestry
of projects, both large and small, woven together into a collective whole that was far greater than the
sum of its individual parts. At times Odum worked with whole ecosystems taking measurements and
developing new techniques for measuring production, respiration and the transfer of energy through
trophic networks. Even so, as Scott Nixon has noted, his knowledge of the taxonomy of individual
species was often profound. At other times he worked with microcosms and simulation models, trying
to emulate the larger world in aggregate. He was an engineer, when necessary, devising his own
instruments when need arose. At times he was an artist, conjuring up diagrams and pictures to get
his points across when words were not enough. In all cases, Odum was striving for clarity out of the
“the bewildering complexity of human knowledge developed in the twentieth century...,” trying to
‘see’ the essence of nature and man-nature interactions, the pervasiveness of energy relations, and
to develop understanding.
He had a single-minded drive for understanding. It is impossible to recall a time when he was at a
loss for a “systems” observation as to why something was as it was nor a time when he could not find
something positive to say to a junior colleague or caught without an encouraging word for one of his
students These are the things that most shaped our image of H.T. Odum, as scientist and teacher.
These represent the legacy that he left us.
In the sections that follow are captured some of the history and brilliance that was H.T. Odum, and to
show the diversity and yet single mindedness that occupied his life.
1. What we know about the young Howard Odum
Howard Thomas Odum was born in 1923 to Howard Washington and Anna Louise Odum in Chapel Hill
North Carolina. He was the third child of the elder Odums following his Brother Eugene (b. 1913) and
sister Mary Francis (b. 1919). Their father was a forward thinking and creative sociologist who in
many ways defined and redefined the science of sociology in the South. Their mother was a very
intelligent and cultured woman. Their house was often full of the intense conversation of other
intellectuals visiting the Odums, and it is clear that the intellectual environment for the young Odums
must have been extremely interesting.
Without detracting from the accomplishments of Eugene Odum, perhaps the more well known of the
two remarkable brothers, Mary Frances, their sister, often referred to HT as “the gifted one”, but went
on to say “his habit of very rapid speech sometimes meant that his ideas were lost on others”. HT
commented, on occasion, that his most important early influences were “The boy electrician,” a love
of birds inherited from his brother Gene, and the influence of the University of North Carolina biologist
Robert Coker. A warm and wonderful rendering of Gene and HT’s early years can be found in Betty
Jean Craige’s “Eugene Odum, Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist” (University of Georgia
Press, 2002) A number of personal perspectives on HT from former students, his wife, Betty, and
colleagues can be found in the last section of “Maximum Power” (Hall, 1996).
Howard T. Odum was essentially an academician throughout his life. He graduated from the
University of North Carolina in 1946 majoring in biology. He served in the Air Force during World War II
as a tropical meteorologist, where undoubtedly he gained his basic interest in large systems and the
energetics behind them. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University under the distinguished ecologist
G. Evelyn Hutchinson in 1951 (and where he was also influenced by Gordon Riley). He taught at the
University of Florida (1950–1954), Duke (1954–1956 ), University of Texas (where he directed the
Marine Station from 1956 to 1963), and was Chief Scientist at the Puerto Rico Nuclear Center (1963–
1966). He returned to teaching at the University of North Carolina (1966–1970) and finally at the
University of Florida (1970–2002).
2. Early and continuing interests: Biogeochemistry
H.T. Odum’s Ph.D. dissertation under G.Evelyn Hutchensen at Yale University dealt with the global
strontium cycle. In letters home to his parents and brother Gene (unpublished) he at first showed
tremendous excitement about the research possibilities and the fact that his work was related to
important “happenings” of the time. Later under the drudgery of analysis after analysis of samples, he
wrote that it had lost some of its excitement, but that once the measurements were finished, he was
sure it would once again stimulate his interests. In the end, it is obvious that HT never lost his
interest for global cycles. These early measurements and the insights they provided seemed to
incubate over the years and surfaced again with his interests in lead cycles in the environment and in
his most interesting work in the late 1990’s and early part of this century, relating biogeochemical
cycles to energy hierarchies and economic cycles.
3. Ecosystems and metabolism
Throughout Odum’s career he returned again and again to ecosystem level studies. His first
ecosystem studies were conducted on the Silver Springs in the early 1950s. Kemp and Boynton
describe how he devised a means of measuring total ecosystem primary production and respiration
and quantitatively evaluate energy flow through the ecosystem. Following closely on the heels of
the Silver Springs study, Odum teamed up with his brother Gene to measure productivity and
estimate trophic structure of a coral reef community in the Pacific. From the coral reefs of the
Pacific, HT descended on the Texas Coast where he was director of the University of Texas’
Institute of Marine Sciences at Port Aransas (1956–1964). Here, he undertook the daunting task of
measuring the Texas Bay ecosystems to determine whole ecosystem metabolism while
administering and supporting a faculty that was undertaking many traditional studies
in biology and fisheries. While it is hard to pinpoint exactly when Odum struck on ideas (for they
often crop up in very early writings as almost random musings), it was during his years at Texas
that several threads of his career appeared, including: Ecological Economics, Ecological
Engineering and the use of microcosms for ecosystem emulation. In addition, his use of the
symbolic systems language he sometimes called “energetics” blossomed with the “invention” of
the “storage tank” that Robert Byers attributed to the water storage tanks that dotted the landscape
of North Carolina during Odum's childhood and that rural Texas communities used for public water
supply.
Following Texas, Odum turned his attention to the rainforests of Puerto Rico’s Luquillo Experimental
Forest. As Chief Scientist at the University of Puerto Rico’s Puerto Rican Nuclear Center, he
conducted experimental irradiation of the rain forest and once again engaged in the massive
undertaking of measuring whole ecosystem metabolism. In this case Odum constructed an enclosure
out of plastic sheets to enclose and thus measure CO2 concentrations in inflow and outflow air
streams to calculate production and respiration. Odum’s work there, was far more than mere
metabolism measurements, as it was manifested in his edited volume “A Tropical Rainforest”, a
gigantic book of 1667 pages that is chocked full of data, pictures, diagrams and Odum insights.
Next Odum turned his attention to the cypress swamps of the Florida flatwoods. With a million dollars
from the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Science Foundation, he assembled more than a
dozen scientists and even more graduate students to study the use of cypress wetlands for waste
water recycle. Every aspect of the ecosystems was studied from soil microbiota to insects, to birds
and mammals. Measurements were made of whole ecosystem primary production, evapotranspiration
and respiration, as well as complete nutrient and hydrological budgets. The book that resulted was
“Cypress Swamps”, edited by Kathy Ewel and Odum. While the book gives details of “... technical
aspects of nutrient cycling mechanisms, productivity rates, producer and consumer diversity
patterns and distribution of microorganisms ..., Cypress Swamps also describes the role of cypress
wetlands within the larger landscape and underscores the usefulness of wetlands as an interface
ecosystem.”
“Ecological Microcosms”, by Beyers and Odum, is“a big book about small worlds.”
It encapsulates in an unselfconscious way the entire spectrum of H.T. Odum’s dynamic and diverse
professional life, from its roots in basic ecology to the application of emergy to world-scale social
and environmental problems.”
To say Odum was a systems scientist is an understatement. Viewing his life’s work as a body of
information, theory and application, it is easy to see that his passion was systems ... any scale, any
size, any type. Odum’s book, Systems Ecology (Odum, 1983) and later renamed Ecological and
General Systems (1994) was a tour-de-force of 644 pages describing the physical, kinetic, energetic,
cybernetic, and mathematical underpinnings of his approach and drawing comparisons with over 50
other systems languages.
Odum felt strongly that the broadest spectrum of the population as possible needed to understand
systems, not only their organization, but more importantly how they behaved. People needed to
understand how systems changed...how they grew, died, reacted to impulses, or reorganized to
accommodate new conditions if they were to transform policy making driven by qualitative guesses
about outcomes, to quantitative predictions based on system energetics. Odum worked through out
his career to develop a systems language that would make the abstract equations of the
mathematical modelers concrete, a symbol language that would allow comparison between systems
so that commonalties were evident. While President of the International Society for Systems
Sciences, he called for a project to translate models of all scales into systems diagrams so that
everyone could better understand them. Odum’s symbol language was also a simulation tool.
Diagrams drawn with the symbols were directly translated into mathematical equations, programmed
in one of several programming languages and simulated. There exists today a plethora of papers and
books that describe the language and the hundreds (probably thousands) of models that were
developed.
Odum’s systems theory was grounded in thermodynamics. Yet he was quick to point out where
thermodynamics got off the track because of its lack of recognition that all energy is NOT the same
form and utility and thus not all forms can be compared directly. Odum was convinced that open
systems thermodynamics required a concept of energy quality that took into account the differences
in energy form. A major aspect of Odium’s open systems thermodynamics was the Maximum Power
principle (later renamed the Maximum Empower Principle). As he stated in his 1994 book, Ecological
and General Systems... “Maximization of useful power may be the most general design principle of
self-organizing systems.” Odum proposed the maximum empower principle as a fourth law of
thermodynamics and later, two other systems properties as the 5th and 6th laws
5. Ecological engineering
Engineering is generally perceived and presented as a “hard” field. The term hard has several
meanings in this context. Most engineering, is in fact “hard” in that it uses concrete, steel and energy
intensive procedures to solve problems. Some say engineering is hard because it uses mathematics
and physics that are often difficult to comprehend. But the real sense of engineering is not that it is
about concrete or about mathematics but instead about problem solving. Since the 1950s, and even
today, one of the largest single engineering problems has been waste treatment. The engineering
solution to waste treatment has typically been “hard” ... concrete, steel and energy intensive
technology. Yet there was, and is, a softer approach. From the early 1950s Odum envisioned a
partnership of humanity and nature and since he was keenly aware that nature had no wastes, but
instead recycled everything, he was quick to propose a new engineering paradigm “Ecological
Engineering” that capitalized on the recycle potential of natural ecosystems.
6. Environment and society
One of the most important insights that H.T. Odum had was simply to consider humans as a legitimate
object of ecological inquiry. This caused him to run into two academic bramble patches
simultaneously. Many ecologists, focused on the sanctity of their beloved nature, were used to (and
still do) view humans as something outside of nature, rather than as a legitimate part of a new,
evolving nature. On the other hand the study of humanity, in the view of many, is properly done only
under the aegis of social scientists, who trumpet “free-will” and thus no causality and especially no
determinism. In contradiction to both of these world views Odum believed... “Much of the earth is
occupied by humanity, either as part of ecosystems or interfacing as users and controllers. Where
humans comprise a major part, new kinds of systems evolve with human culture at the hierarchical
center. Information processing, social structure, symbolism, money, political power, and war become
important components along with the vegetation, consumer organisms, and the inanimate work of the
biosphere.” ...
7. Ecology and economics
Of all the social sciences, economics affects us the most. Odum made some very explicit initial
observations that are the essence of two principles of economics that are missed by virtually all
economists. These are that money is not a measure of value, but rather simply a means of exchange.
Another important insight from Odum is that the flow of energy in properly functioning ecosystems
was critical to economic activity. He did not believe that the ways that pollutants impacted nature
were “externalities” but rather an erosion of the necessary capital machinery provided by nature that
was necessary for all economic activity.
8. Emergy analysis
Emergy is probably the least understood and the most widely criticized of Odum’s ideas and
concepts. The concept developed over a 30 odd year period of time beginning in the early 1970’s and
culminated in the publication of his book, Environmental Accounting. (Odum, 1996). Odum defined
emergy as the energy required to make something. Since it takes resources to make resources, it
was not difficult to suggest that the true value of something was the resources required to make it,
instead of the utility one might get from using it. Central to the concept of emergy was the concept of
energy quality...all energy is not the same. A joule of sunlight is not the same as a joule of oil. Thus a
significant contribution of the emergy theory is its revelation of the comparative qualities of energy.
Emergy evolved throughout the three decades of its development. For a brief period it was called
embodied energy until it was realized that others in the field were using the term to describe a
different concept. David Scienceman, a visiting Australian physicist, contributed the concept of
energy memory and the word emergy was born in the late 1970s. Soon to follow was the word
transformity which replaced “energy transformation ratio” and the concept of empower which was
emergy per time. At first emergy was expressed as coal emergy but this soon gave way to solar
emergy when it was noted that energies with lower qualities than coal had magnitudes less than one.
It was a natural to use emergy to evaluate all sorts of systems. When first developed, the concept
was applied to energy systems, but soon Odum and colleagues were evaluating ecosystems
agricultural systems, and human dominated systems. Transformities (ratio of emergy required to
make something to the energy of the product) for products of every sort were calculated and tables
of transformities compiled. By the turn of the century Odum and colleagues had begun producing a
series of folios where emergy transformities were compiled and published for use by others.
9. A prosperous way down
If indeed the oil-gas world is a one shot deal, if humanity has built up far more infrastructure and
human numbers than can be supported without the influx of this very special stuff petroleum, what
kind of a future is in store for us? The response of most is to say “OK, we need to figure out some
other energy source, solar panels, windmills, nuclear or whatever”. Howard Odum thought that oil was
special, that he was living through a one shot run of history when fuel would be cheap. Odum always
thought that if a full, comprehensive analysis was made of all the necessary inputs then there would
be few if any other energy sources that could match petroleum, which after all is the net production
of some ancient ecosystems. Some thirty years after the “energy crunches” of the 1970s, despite a
great deal of effort, there is no obvious competition for petroleum (or coal) on the horizon, at least at
the scale required. Some alternatives, such as nuclear, look even less immediately promising. We do
not know exactly when we will “run out of cheap oil” but it is almost certainly within a generation and
maybe much sooner So the last best thing Odum left us was a plan for dealing with what he believed
to be an inevitable future in the book “A Prosperous Way Down”
10. Philosophical overview of the contributions of H.T. Odum
It is certainly much too early to understand the full contribution of Howard Odum’s science to the long
haul, but this is a good place to start this effort.
References
Hall, C.A.S., Tharakan, P.J., Hallock, J., Cleveland, C., Jefferson, M., in press. Hydrocarbons and the
evolution of human culture. Nature.
Craige, B.J., 2002. Eugene Odum, Ecosystem Ecologist and Environmentalist. University of Georgia
Press, Athens.
Odum, Odum, 2001. A Prosperous Way Down. University Press of Colorado. Boulder.
Månsson, B.Å., McGlade, J.M., 1993. Ecology thermodynamics and Odum’s conjectures. Oecologia 93,
582–596.
Odum, H.T., 1994. Ecological and General Systems. University Press of Colorado, Niwot, CO.
Hall, C.A.S. (Ed.), 1996. Maximum Power: the Ideas and Applications of H.T. Odum. University Press of
Colorado, Niwot, CO.
Odum, H.T., Wojcik, W., Pritchard Jr., L., Ton, S., Delfino, J.J., Wojcik, M., Leszczynski, S., Patel, J.D.,
Doherty, S.J., Stasik, J. (Eds.), 2000. Heavy Metals in the Environment, Using Wetlands for Their
Removal. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 326 pp.
Odum, H.T., 1953. Environment Power and Society. Wiley, New York.
Odum, H.T., 1983. Systems Ecology: An Introduction. Wiley, 644 pp
Odum, H.T., 1996. Environmental Accounting. Wiley, New York.
Odum, H.T. , 2007. Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-first Century. Columbia University
Press. New York, 418 pp
Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences
Box 116350, University of Florida, Gainesville
FL 32611-6350, USA
*
| Click on this link for excellent article. http://www.eoearth.org/article/Howard_T._Odum_Collection |
| Click on this link for the oral history podcast made by the University of Florida. HT Odum's oral history podcast |
| Pictures of H.T. Odum over his career presented during the Opening Reception to the Howard T. Odum Papers Collection at the Smather's Library, University of Florida H.T. Odum picture slideshow |
