Lindeman, Raymond L. (1915 – 1942) American Ecologist

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Raymond L. Lindeman (1915 – 1942)
American ecologist

Few scholars or scientists, even those much published and long-lived, leave singular, indelible imprints on their disciplines,. Yet, Raymond Lindeman, in 26 short years, who published just six articles, was described shortly after his death by G. E. Hutchinson as "one of the most creative and generous minds yet to devote itself to ecological science," and the last of those six papers, "The Trophic-Dynamic Aspect of Ecology,"—published posthumously in 1942—continues to be considered one of the foundational papers in ecology , an article "path-breaking in its general analysis of ecological succession in terms of energy flow through the ecosystem," an article based on an idea that Edward Kormondy has called "the most significant formulation in the development of modern ecology."

Immediately after completing his doctorate at the University of Minnesota, Lindeman accepted a one-year Sterling fellowship at Yale University to work with G. Evelyn Hutchinson, the Dean of American limnologists. He had published chapters of his thesis one by one and at Yale worked to revise the final chapter, refining it with ideas drawn from Hutchinson's lecture notes and from their discussions about the ecology of lakes. Lindeman submitted the manuscript to Ecology with Hutchinson's blessings, but it was rejected based on reviewers' claims that it was speculation far beyond the data presented from research on three lakes, including Lindeman's own doctoral research on Cedar Bog Lake. After input from several well-known ecologists, further revisions, and with further urging from Hutchinson, the editor finally overrode the reviewers' comments and accepted the manuscript; it was published in the October, 1942 issue of Ecology, a few months after Lindeman died in June of that year.

The important advances made by Lindeman's seminal article included his use of the ecosystem concept, which he was convinced was "of fundamental importance in interpreting the data of dynamic ecology," and his explication of the idea that "all function, and indeed all life" within ecosystems depends on the movement of energy through such systems by way of trophic relationships. His use of ecosystem went beyond the little attention paid to it by Hutchinson and beyond Tansley's labeling of the unit seven years earlier to open up "new directions for the analysis of the functioning of ecosystems." More than half a century after Lindeman's article, and despite recent revelations on the uncertainty and unpredictability of natural systems, a majority of ecologists probably still accept ecosystem as the basic unit in ecology and, in those systems, energy exchange as the basic process.

Lindeman was able to effectively demonstrate a way to bring together or synthesize two quite separate traditions in ecology, autecology , dependent on physiological studies of individual organisms and species , and synecology focused on studies of communities, aggregates of individuals. He believed, and demonstrated, that ecological research would benefit from a synthesis of these organism-based approaches and focus on the energy relationships that tied organism and environment into one unit—the ecosystem—suggesting as a result that biotic and abiotic could not realistically be disengaged, especially in ecology.

Half a decade or so of work on cedar bog lakes, and half a dozen articles would seem a thin stem on which to base a legacy. But it really boils down to Lindeman's synthesis of that work in that one singular, seminal paper, in which he created one of the significant stepping stones from a mostly descriptive discipline toward a more sophisticated and modern theoretical ecology.

[Gerald J. Young Ph.D. ]