interactive systems at the top. Their model textbook wasPrinciples of Ani-
mal Ecology(), by Warder Allee and others. Gene Odum’s intellectual
and pedagogical model was the opposite, the top-down approach, to which
he would adhere the rest of his long life. Whether young student or mature
scientist, one begins with the system, then proceeds to its parts. Gene de-
cided, then, to create a textbook of his own. HisPrinciples of Ecologyfinally
appeared in , the year before his father’s death. The elder Odum, in
fact, had puffed Gene’s project to publishers he had known for years, en-
couraged his son at every turn, and cheered the appearance of what would
soon become a classic.^51
There was other family assistance, too, that found its way into the text
of the first edition ofPrinciples. While Gene labored at his classic-to-be, he
was in constant contact with his brother, Howard Thomas, eleven years his
junior and then a doctoral candidate in ecology at Yale. Tom (as he was
called in youth, and later) was a student of none other than Professor
George Evelyn Hutchinson, who had mentored Raymond Lindeman the
last years of the young Minnesotan’s life. The younger Howard had been
a much more serious student than the young Gene. Now he was complet-
ing what was arguably the best scientific preparation available in North
America at the time. Tom was also, as Gene understood well enough, a
much better mathematician than his brother. Here was a significant family
asset, then, since Gene’s version of ecological systems involved measurable
thermal changes and exchanges. So while still a graduate student, Tom be-
came Gene’s number cruncher and received principal credit for writing the
critical energy chapter inPrinciples.
The brothers Odum were very different, as family members and friends
often observed. Gene was informal, gregarious, and intuitive.was the
serious fellow, precise, seemingly more aloof, and perhaps not the patient
teacher his brother always was. On the other hand, both brothers were tall,
long-nosed, lean and fit, and competitive and confident not only in their
profession but in sport. They were aggressive and skillful tennis players.
They were also fast friends and frequent collaborators. Once, on a federally
sponsored research trip, they worked together among the corals at Eniwe-
tok Island in the Pacific, measuring the ecological effects of atomic test-
ing. They did not work at the same academic institution, however.spent
much of his career at the University of Florida, but he also moved about, to
Chapel Hill, to Duke, and to the University of Texas.
At Florida he replicated, in effect, many of his older brother’s admin-
istrative and research accomplishments at Athens. Gene had been prin-