Eugene Pleasants Odum, a Life Member of the AOU since 1932, an Elective Member since 1943, and a Fellow since 1951, died 10 August 2002 of an apparent heart attack while tending his garden. Gene was born in New Hampshire on 17 September 1913 and spent most of his childhood and college days in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He developed a keen interest in birds and natural history during grade school, encouraged by his cousin, Dr. George Mayfield of the Tennessee Ornithological Society. At high school, Gene and his friend Coit Coker started a bird magazine and a newspaper column called Bird Life in Chapel Hill. Gene never tired of teaching and used every opportunity to inform people enthusiastically about birds and the environment. While at home on breaks from graduate school, he taught his younger brother Howard Thomas Odum (1924-2002), then in high school, much of the that he learned from pioneers such as Victor E. Shelford and his major professor S. Charles Kendeigh. Howard, known as H.T. or Tom, described Gene as one of his five great teachers. Gene developed his holistic vision of science in part from the sociological teachings and interdisciplinary approaches of his father, sociologist Howard W. Odum. Gene's studies in zoology began at age 15 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (A.B. 1934 and M.A. 1936). His grades in academic classes suffered, he said, from too much time in the field learning about plants and animals in relation to their environment. His ornithological career, which spanned 71 years, began with his first high school publications on backyard birds and the nesting habits of the Hooded Warbler (1930s) and ended with his paper on avian research at the Savannah River Site, South Carolina (2001). After a formative summer at the Allegheny School of Natural History, Gene began teaching half-time at Case Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio during 1936-1937, replacing Charles Kendeigh, who left to join Victor Shelford at the University of Illinois-Champaign. Advice from ornithologist H. C. Oberholser of the National Museum in Washington, D.C. led Gene to study for his doctoral degree at the University of Illinois (Ph.D. 1939) under Kendeigh's direction. Gene's innovative spirit, evident throughout his life, was manifest in his dissertation, Variations in the heart rate of birds: A study in physiological ecology (1939 Ecological Moniographs 11:299-326), using a cardio-vibrometer he helped invent to measure the heart rate of small birds. During his last year at Illinois, Gene's sister Mary Frances introduced him to Martha Ann Huff, an artist. Engaged on their third date, they were married on 18 November 1939, beginning a 56-year loving marriage. His year as resident naturalist at the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve, Rensselaerville, New York, was for them an extended honeymoon. Here, emulating Victor Shelford, Gene became more interested in the whole rather the parts of the ecological system, conducting chickadee behavioral and physiological studies, and beginning to shift his attention to plantanimal systems. Martha and Gene had two sons, William Eugene (1942-1991) and Daniel Thomas (1946-1987). Bill Odum became a well-respected ecologist and head of the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, but his life ended prematurely in 1991 after a short illness. In September 1940, Gene's long and productive association with the University of Georgia in Athens began as an instructor in the Biology Department. The Odums moved onto a small acreage just outside Athens given them by his father. Gene began conducting bird studies in Athens and Highlands, North Carolina. When World War II began, he taught courses for medical and pharmacy corps, nursing, and premedical students for three years. With Earle Greene, Herbert Stoddard, William Griffin, and Ivan Tomkins, he published Birds of Georgia: A Preliminary Check-list and Bibliography of Georgia Ornithology (1945). In 1946, Gene was spurred to begin writing Fundamentals of Ecology (1953) after a departmental faculty meeting in which others suggested that was a subordinate, not a basic discipline of biology. When enquiries by some faculty members
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