Sir Arthur George Tansley
FLS,
FRS (15 August 1871 – 25 November 1955) was an
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
botanist
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...
and a pioneer in the science of
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
.
Educated at
Highgate School,
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
and
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...
, Tansley taught at these universities and at
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
, where he served as
Sherardian Professor of Botany
The Sherardian Chair of Botany is a professorship at the University of Oxford that was established in 1734. It was created following an endowment by William Sherard on his death in 1728. In his will, Sherard stipulated that the first holder of th ...
until his retirement in 1937. Tansley founded the ''
New Phytologist
''New Phytologist'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published on behalf of the New Phytologist Foundation by Wiley-Blackwell. It was founded in 1902 by botanist Arthur Tansley, who served as editor until 1931.
Topics covered
''New Phytolo ...
'' in 1902 and served as its editor until 1931.
He was a pioneer of the science of
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
in Britain, being heavily influenced by the work of Danish botanist
Eugenius Warming
Eugenius (died 6 September 394) was a usurper in the Western Roman Empire (392–394) against Emperor Theodosius I. While Christian himself, Eugenius capitalized on the discontent in the West caused by Theodosius' religious policies targeting p ...
,
and introduced the concept of the
ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...
into biology.
Tansley was a founding member of the first professional society of ecologists, the Central Committee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation, which later organised the
British Ecological Society
The British Ecological Society is a learned society in the field of ecology that was founded in 1913. It is the oldest ecological society in the world. The Society's original objective was "to promote and foster the study of Ecology in its widest ...
, and served as its first president and founding editor of the ''
Journal of Ecology
The ''Journal of Ecology'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of the ecology of plants. It was established in 1913 and is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the British Ecological Society.
The journal pub ...
''.
Tansley also served as the first chairman of the British
Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US.
Founded in 1951, The Nat ...
.
Tansley was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
in 1915, and knighted in 1950.
The ''New Phytologist'' publishes regular Tansley Reviews, while the New Phytologist Trust awards a Tansley Medal, both named in his honour.
Early life and education
Tansley was born in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
to businessman George Tansley
and his wife Amelia. Although a successful businessman, George Tansley's passion had been education after he started attending classes at the
Working Men's College when he was 19. George Tansley later went on to be a volunteer teacher, retiring from his business in 1884 to dedicate himself to teaching at the college. He married Amelia Lawrence in 1863 and had two children – the older a daughter,
Maud,
followed by Arthur seven years later, in 1871.
Tansley's interest in science was sparked by one of his father's fellow volunteer-teachers, who was described as "an excellent and enthusiastic field botanist". After attending preparatory school from the ages of 12 to 15, he enrolled in
Highgate School. Unhappy with the science teaching, which he considered "farcically inadequate", he switched to University College London in 1889
and studied at the faculty of Biological science, where he was heavily influenced by
Ray Lankester
Sir Edwin Ray Lankester (15 May 1847 – 13 August 1929) was a British zoologist.New International Encyclopaedia.
An invertebrate zoologist and evolutionary biologist, he held chairs at University College London and Oxford University. He was th ...
and
F. W. Oliver
Francis Wall Oliver Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (10 May 1864 – 14 September 1951) was an English botanist.
He was educated at Bootham School, York.
He was Quain Professor of Botany at University College London 1890–1925 where he supervi ...
. In 1890 Tansley attended
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...
. After completing Part I of
Tripos
At the University of Cambridge, a Tripos (, plural 'Triposes') is any of the examinations that qualify an undergraduate for a bachelor's degree or the courses taken by a student to prepare for these. For example, an undergraduate studying mathe ...
in 1893, he returned to University College London as an assistant to Oliver, a position he retained until 1907. In 1894 he returned to Cambridge and completed Part II of Tripos,
and received a degree with first class honours.
Professional career
Tansley taught and conducted research at University College London from 1893 until 1907.
In 1907 he took a Lecturer position at the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
.
During the First World War, with very little teaching going on at the university, Tansley took a position as a clerk
with the Ministry of Munitions.
In 1923 he resigned his position at Cambridge and spent a year in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
studying psychology under
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
.
When he returned to Britain in 1924 Tansley was appointed acting chairman of the British Empire Vegetation Committee.
After four years away from a formal academic position in botany, Tansley was appointed
Sherardian Professor of Botany
The Sherardian Chair of Botany is a professorship at the University of Oxford that was established in 1734. It was created following an endowment by William Sherard on his death in 1728. In his will, Sherard stipulated that the first holder of th ...
at the University of Oxford in 1927, where he remained until his retirement in 1937.
Major contributions
Tansley's early publications focused on
palaeobotany
Paleobotany, which is also spelled as palaeobotany, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments (paleogeogr ...
, especially
fern evolution.
Tansley founded the botany journal ''
New Phytologist
''New Phytologist'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published on behalf of the New Phytologist Foundation by Wiley-Blackwell. It was founded in 1902 by botanist Arthur Tansley, who served as editor until 1931.
Topics covered
''New Phytolo ...
'' in 1902 to serve as "a medium of easy communication and discussion between British botanists on all matters . . . including methods of teaching and research". It was named after ''
The Phytologist
''The Phytologist'' was a British botanical journal, appearing first as ''Phytologist: a popular botanical miscellany''. It was founded in 1841 as a monthly, edited by George Luxford. Luxford died in 1854, and the title was taken over by Alexa ...
'', a botanical magazine published between 1842 and 1863.
In establishing this journal, Tansley's aim was to provide a venue for the publication of "notes and suggestions"; existing botanical journals only published records of completed research.
He remained editor of the journal until 1931.
Tansley's introduction to ecology came in 1898 when he read Warming's ''
Plantesamfund
''Plantesamfund - Grundtræk af den økologiske Plantegeografi'', published in Danish in 1895 by Eugen Warming, and in English in 1909 as ''Oecology of Plants: An Introduction to the Study of Plant Communities'', by Warming and Martin Vahl, was th ...
'' (in its German translation, ''Lehrbuch der ökologischen Pflanzengeographie''). Reading the book provoked him to "
oout into the field to see how far one could match the plant communities Warming had described for Denmark in the English countryside". In 1903 he learned of the work done by the Smith brothers in mapping the vegetation of Scotland and Yorkshire. The work was initiated by Robert Smith and continued by his brother,
William Gardner Smith
William Gardner Smith (February 6, 1927 – November 5, 1974) was an American journalist, novelist, and editor. Smith is linked to the black social protest novel tradition of the 1940s and the 1950s, a movement that became synonymous with writ ...
(in conjunction with
Charles Edward Moss
Charles Edward Moss (February 7, 1870 Hyde, Cheshire – November 11, 1930 Johannesburg), was an English-born South African botanist, the youngest son of a nonconformist minister, and is noted for being the editor of the first two parts of ''Th ...
) after Robert's death.
In 1904 Tansley suggested the formation of a central body for the systematic survey and mapping of the British Isles. This led to the establishment of the Central Committee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation by Tansley, Moss, William Smith and
T. W. Woodhead,
with the support of Marcel Hardy, F. J. Lewis, Lloyd Praeger and W. M. Rankin. These eight formed the original committee,
with Tansley as its leader.
F. W. Oliver later joined the group as its ninth member. The name of the group was later shortened to the British Vegetation Committee. The aim of the group was to coordinate ongoing studies and standardise the methodology being used. The committee met twice more in 1905 and produced a six-page pamphlet, ''Suggestions for Beginning Survey Work on Vegetation''.
In 1911 Tansley, in conjunction with the British Vegetation Committee, organised the first
International Phytogeographic Excursion (IPE).
He was inspired by a plant geography tour of Switzerland organised by Swiss botanist
Carl Schröter in 1908, which introduced him not only to vegetation types, but also to botanists from other countries. The connections made between Tansley and American ecologists
Henry Chandler Cowles
Henry Chandler Cowles (February 27, 1869 – September 12, 1939) was an American botanist and ecological pioneer (see History of ecology). A professor at the University of Chicago, he studied ecological succession in the Indiana Dunes of Nort ...
and
Frederic Clements
Frederic Edward Clements (September 16, 1874 – July 26, 1945) was an American plant ecologist and pioneer in the study of plant ecology and vegetation succession.
Biography
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, he studied botany at the University of Nebra ...
helped build a philosophical and methodological link between British and American plant ecology.
Other attendees included Schröter, Swedish botanist
Carl Lindman, and German botanists
Oscar Drude and
Paul Graebner
Carl Otto Robert Peter Paul Graebner (29 June 1871 in Aplerbeck – 6 February 1933 in Berlin) was a German botanist.
In 1895 he obtained his doctorate in Berlin, successively working as an assistant and then as curator (1904) at the botanical ga ...
. Tansley's book ''Types of British Vegetation'' was prepared with an eye to serving as a guide to the vegetation for the attendees of the first IPE.
The second IPE in 1913 was hosted by Cowles. This brought Tansley to America.
In 1913, the British Vegetation Committee organised the
British Ecological Society
The British Ecological Society is a learned society in the field of ecology that was founded in 1913. It is the oldest ecological society in the world. The Society's original objective was "to promote and foster the study of Ecology in its widest ...
(BES), the first-ever professional society of ecologists. Tansley served as its first president, and was first editor of the ''
Journal of Ecology
The ''Journal of Ecology'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of the ecology of plants. It was established in 1913 and is published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the British Ecological Society.
The journal pub ...
'', a position he held for 21 years.
In 1915 he was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society
Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
, and in 1923 he was elected president of the Botanical Section of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science. At the
Imperial Botanical Congress
Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism.
Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to:
Places
United States
* Imperial, California
* Imperial, Missouri
* Imperial, Nebraska
* Imperial, Pennsylvania
* Imperial, Tex ...
in 1924 he was appointed chairman of the British Empire Vegetation Committee. He served as president of the BES a second time in 1938.
William S. Cooper considered Tansley's most influential publications synthesised individual studies into a whole.
In 1935 Tansley published "The use and abuse of vegetational terms and concepts"
in which he introduced the
ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...
concept.
[The term ecosystem was actually coined by ]Arthur Roy Clapham
Arthur Roy Clapham (24 May 1904 – 18 December 1990), was a British botanist. Born in Norwich and educated at Downing College, Cambridge, Clapham worked at Rothamsted Experimental Station as a crop physiologist (1928–30), and then took a te ...
, who came up with the word at Tansley's request. (Willis 1997) In the 1930s ecological thinking was dominated by the work of Clements, who thought of
ecological communities as organisms, and
associations as
superorganism
A superorganism or supraorganism is a group of synergetically interacting organisms of the same species. A community of synergetically interacting organisms of different species is called a holobiont.
Concept
The term superorganism is used m ...
s.
Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment,
regarding ecosystems as the basic units of nature.
Tansley's interest in teaching led to the production of the ''Elements of Plant Ecology'' in 1922, which was followed by ''Practical Plant Ecology'' in 1923 and ''Aims and methods in the study of vegetation'' in 1926, coauthored with
Thomas Ford Chipp
Thomas Ford Chipp (1 January 1886 – 28 June 1931) was an English botanist who became Assistant Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
He played an important role in development of the study of ecology in the British Empire.
Early career ...
.
The last book, edited for the British Empire Vegetation Committee, was extremely influential not just in defining ecological methods but in highlighting the need for a complete inventory of the empire's "vegetational assets". With this information, it would be possible to efficiently manage the vast natural resources of the empire. Tansley's most comprehensive work, ''The British Islands and Their Vegetation'' was published in 1939. Volume 2 was published in 1949. In recognition of this achievement, he was awarded the
Linnean Medal in 1941.
During the Second World War Tansley became committed to
conservation
Conservation is the preservation or efficient use of resources, or the conservation of various quantities under physical laws.
Conservation may also refer to:
Environment and natural resources
* Nature conservation, the protection and managem ...
, and this continued through post-war reconstruction. He chaired a committee of the BES that formulated a policy on
nature reserve
A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or ...
s and led to the formation of the
Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) is a global environmental organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. it works via affiliates or branches in 79 countries and territories, as well as across every state in the US.
Founded in 1951, The Nat ...
,
which he also chaired.
Tansley's conservation work was the basis cited for his knighthood in 1950.
Tansley was introduced to
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
by a former student,
Bernard Hart
Bernard Hart (1879–1966) was a British physician and psychiatrist.
After secondary education at University College School, Hampstead, and undergraduate education at University College London, Bernard Hart graduated from University College H ...
, who worked as a doctor in mental hospitals near London. While working for the Ministry of Munitions during the First World War, he had a dream which was described as "one of the major turning points in his life" – from this dream came Tansley's interest in Freud and
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
.
In 1920 he published ''The New Psychology and its Relation to Life'', one of the first books that attempted to introduce the ideas of Freud and
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
to a general audience. The book was a bestseller, selling 10,000 copies in the United Kingdom and 4,000 in the United States. In 1922 Tansley spent three months with Freud, and the following year he moved his family to Vienna for a year. Although he later returned to botanical pursuits, Tansley remained in contact with Freud and wrote his obituary.
Research by Peder Anker has suggested a close theoretical relationship between Tansley's ecology and his psychology.
Personal life
![The Tansley Stone, Kingley Vale](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/The_Tansley_Stone%2C_Kingley_Vale._-_geograph.org.uk_-_1503536.jpg)
In 1903 Tansley married Edith Chick, a former student with whom he coauthored two papers.
They had three daughters–Katharine, Margaret and Helen. Lady Edith Tansley died in 1970,
at age 100.
Tansley was an atheist.
["They became correspondents and, surprisingly since Tansley was an avowed atheist, friends." - Peter G. Ayres, Shaping Ecology: The Life of Arthur Tansley, page 139.]
See also
*
Hugh M. Raup Hugh Miller Raup (February 4, 1901 – August 10, 1995) was an American botanist, ecologist and geographer working on natural history and natural resource management in diverse regions—from tropical and temperate to arctic.
Biography
He was born ...
Notes
References
Other sources
* Lack, A. (2012). "Peter G. Ayres: Shaping ecology: the life of Arthur Tansley". ''Journal of Insect Conservation'', July.
External links
*
Arthur TansleyThe Tansley Stone – memorial to Tansley in Sussex
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tansley, Arthur
English ecologists
People educated at Highgate School
Fellows of the Royal Society
1871 births
1955 deaths
English botanists
Sherardian Professors of Botany
Analysands of Sigmund Freud
English atheists