Johannes Eugenius Bülow Warming (November 3, 1841 – April 2, 1924), known as Eugen Warming, was a Danish botanist and a main founding figure of the scientific discipline of ecology. Warming wrote the first textbook (1895) on plant ecology, taught the first university course in ecology and gave the concept its meaning and content. “If one individual can be singled out to be honoured as the founder of ecology, Warming should gain precedence”.
Warming wrote a number of textbooks on botany, plant geography and ecology, which were translated to several languages and were immensely influential at their time and later. Most important were Plantesamfund and Haandbog i den systematiske Botanik.
He married Johanne Margrethe Jespersen (known as Hanne Warming; 1850-1922) on November 10, 1871. They had eight children: Marie (1872-1947) married C.V. Prytz, Jens Warming (1873-1939), who became a professor in economy and statistics at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural College, Fro (1875-1880), Povl (1877-1878), Svend Warming (1879-1982), engineer at Burmeister & Wain shipyard, Inge (1879-1893), Johannes (1882-1970), farmer, and Louise (1884-1964). External link: Ancestors and descendents
The professorship in botany at the University of Copenhagen became vacant with the death of A.S. Ørsted and Warming was the obvious candidate for a successor. However, he was passed over and the chair given to the older, but much less productive and original Ferdinand Didrichsen. Warming then became docent of botany at the University of Copenhagen, the polytechnic (Polyteknisk Læreanstalt) and the Pharmaceutical College 1873-1882. He became professor in botany at Stockholms högskola (later Stockholm University) 1882-1885. As the eldest professor, he was elected rector magnificus. In 1885, he became professor in botany at the University of Copenhagen and director of the Copenhagen Botanical Garden and held these positions until his retirement in December 31, 1910. He was rector magnificus of the University of Copenhagen 1907-1908.
He was a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters from 1878 to his death. As such, he served on the board of directors of the Carlsberg Foundation 1889-1921 and, because a biologist, on the board of the Carlsberg Laboratory. He also served on the board of the Geological Survey of Denmark 1895-1917.
Eugen Warming was a frequent visitor to foreign universities, e.g. a travel to Strasbourg and Paris in 1876 and another to Göttingen, Jena, Bonn, Strasbourg and Paris in 1880. He participated in several Scandinavian Scientist Conferences between 1868 and 1916 and in the similar German meeting in Breslau in 1874. He joined the International Botanical Congresses in Amsterdam 1877, in Vienna 1905 and in Brussels 1910 and was president of the ‘Association internationale des botanistes‘ (1913). He attended the Linnaeus celebration in Uppsala 1907 and the Darwin celebration in London 1908. He was honorary fellow of the Royal Society in London and honorary member of the Danish Botanical Society. He was a corresponding member of the botanical section of the French Academy of Sciences. He was made Commander 1st Degree of the Order of the Dannebrog, Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and the Brazilian Imperial Order of the Rose. He is buried in Assistants Cemetery in Copenhagen.
In addition, shorter visits to the Alps and other proximate destinations.
The subtitle alludes to the title of the book Grundtræk af den almindelige Plantegeografi, published in 1822 (German edn 1823: Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Pflanzengeographie) by J.F. Schouw, co-founder of the scientific phytogeography.
Plantesamfund was translated to German in 1896 as
A second, unauthorized, edition was issued during 1902 by Paul Graebner, who put his own name after Warming’s on the book’s frontispiece, despite no changes to the contents.
This edition was expanded in third and fourth editions:
A Polish translation of ’Plantesamfund’ (from Knoblauch’s German translation) appeared in 1900:
Two independent Russian (Moscow and St. Petersburg) editions appeared in 1901 and 1903
An extended and translated edition in English first appeared in 1909:
The German ecologist A. F. W. Schimper published ”Pflanzengeographie auf physiologisher Grundlage” in 1898.
"This work not only covered much of the same ground as Warming did in 1895 and 1896 but in fact also leaned heavily on Warming’s research. Schimper (1898) quoted extensively from more than fifteen of Warming’s works and even reproduced Warming’s figures. Yet nowhere did Schimper acknowledge his profound debt to Warming, neither in the list of picture credits, nor in the acknowledgements section of the Vorwort, nor in his list of major sources, and not even in a footnote! ... Although replete with Warming’s data, it contains few ideas and did not advance ecology beyond what Warming had done earlier.”
German edn 1890: Handbuch der systematischen Botanik by E. Knoblauch (2nd edn 1902, 3rd edn 1911, 4th edn 1929 all by M. Möbius). Russian edn 1893: Систематика растеній (from the 3rd Danish edn by S. Rostovzev and M. Golenkin; 2nd edn 1898). English edn 1895: A handbook of systematic botany (by M.C. Potter; several editions, latest 1932). The section on seed plants was later expanded and issued as
Also, Warming's schoolbook on botany was used abroad: Warming Eug. (1900) Plantelivet: Lærebog i Botanik for Skoler og Seminarier [translated title: Plant Life]. København. (2nd edn 1902; 3rd edn 1905; 4th and 5th edns by C. Raunkiær and Warming 1908 and 1914, respectively; 6th edn (1920) by E. Warming and Johs. Boye Petersen). English edn 1911: Plant Life - A Text-book of Botany for Schools and Colleges (from the 4th edn by M.M. Rehling and E.M. Thomas). London. Russian edn 1904: Растение и его жизнь (Началный учебник ботаники). (from the 2nd edn by L.M. Krečotovič and M. Golenkin). Moskva.
They were all published as volumes in the series ’Videnskabelige Meddelelser fra den Naturhistoriske Forening i Kjøbenhavn’. In addition, Warming treated the families Vochysiaceae and Trigoniaceae for the Flora Brasiliensis:
Part I-V. Allpublished in Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter - Naturvidenskabelig og Mathematisk Afdeling, 6. Rk.
Warming issued a lengthy summary in French (1893): Lagoa Santa – Étude de Geographie Botanique. Revue Générale de Botanique 5: 145-158, 209-233. Portuguese translation: Warming, Eugenio Lagoa Santa: Contribuição para a geographia phytobiologica, by Alberto Löfgren Belo Horizonte, 1908. This edition was augmented by the Brazilian ecologist M.G. Ferri with more recent research on the cerrado system and reissued as: Warming, E. & Ferri, M.G. (1973) Lagoa Santa – a vegetação de cerrados brasileiros. University of São Paulo.
Warming's doctoral thesis (in Danish) dealt with ontogeny of the cyathia of Euphorbia (Euphorbiaceae).
Part of the work was published in German the year before the thesis:
His studies of pollen and anther formation i Angiosperms and on the inflorescence of Asteraceae were published in von Hanstein's Botanische Abhandlungen:
His studies on seed plant ovules were published in French as
All these works a still cited in scientific papers by scholars of botany every now and then.
Trough the 1870s, Warming became much-influenced by Darwinism. The scope of his research changed. First towards understanding ontogenesis in the light of a common descent as seen in De l’Ovule, later towards plant adaptation to environmental conditions. Again, his unparalleled ability to observe plants paired with his tropical experiencewas decisive to the route he chose.
he presented a classification based on longevity of the plant, power of vegetative propagation, duration of tillers, hypogeous or epigeous type of shoots, mode of wintering, and degree and mode of branching of rhizomes. The observation were made while raising wild plants from seed under garden conditions. In the late 1880s, after Warming's return to Copenhagen, he swopped research topic with his student Christen Raunkiær, who had traveled along the North Sea coast from Jutland to the Netherlands and published on the phytogeography of coastal vegetation. Warming now worked on plant adaptations in dunes and salt marshes, while Raunkiær studied the morphology of Danish plants, eventually leading him to his plant life-form scheme. Nevertheless, after Raunkiær had published his life-form scheme, Warming return to this topic in the work
Warming’s new scheme was less simple than Raunkiær's, taking other environmental factors than wintering into account, especially water/drought stress. Warming did not approve of what he saw as over-simplification in the Raunkiær scheme. Warmings last published work was a renewed attempt to put all plant (including bacteria and algae) life forms into a system.
Warming's collections of leaves, stems and flowers, made during the brief expedition, were examined in detail and the anatomy of a number of species described in a series of papers in Danish. Later, Warming distributed the material family-wise, now ameliorated with collectections made later expeditions and elsewhere in the Arctic, to students, who made further investigations and published the results in English: Warming, E. ed. (1908-1921) The structure and biology of Arctic flowering plants. Meddelelser om Grønland vol. 36: 1-481 and 37: 1-507.
It was Eugenius Warming's Lehrbuch der ökologischen Pflanzengeographie that must be considered as the starting point of self-conscious ecology. This book was the first to use physiological relations between plants and their environment, and in addition biotic interactions to explain the moulding of the assemblages that plant geographers had described and classified, and it would set up a research agenda for decades to come.
Despite the language barrier, Warming’s influence on the development of ecology is remarkable, not the least in Britain and the USA. The British ecologist Arthur Tansley was extremely influenced by reading ’Plantesamfund’ (or rather the 1896 German edition). Reading the book made him jump from anatomy to ecology. Tansley used the book as textbook in a university course as early as 1899. Similarly, Warming's book was decisive in forming the careers of North American naturalists like Henry Chandler Cowles. Cowles' now classic studies of Lake Michigan sand dune plant communities were directly inspired by Warming's studies of Danish dunes. Also Frederic Clements was much inspired by Warming when starting to working with succession, but more by Oscar Drude in formulating his concept of vegetational climax in his 1916 book.
A more unexpected avenue of influence went through the American sociologist Robert E. Park, who read Warming's Oecology of Plants and used the ideas of ecological succession as inspiration for a notion of succession in human communities - a human ecology.
Warming’s influence on later Scandinavian ecology was immense. Especially significant was his inspiration to Christen Raunkiær – his pupil and successor on the chair of botany at the University of Copenhagen. In addition, he had a direct influence of Danish research, scientific and other, for a couple of decades. After his appointment to the professorship in Copenhagen, he gradually took over Japetus Steenstrups power base, most notably as one of three members of the board of the Carlsberg Foundation for 32 years. Thus, Warming had the upper hand in whom should be granted money and whom should not.
Politically, Warming was national-conservative, Scandinavist and anti-Prussian. Warming was able to visit his birth place only a few times in his life because Schleswig was conquered by Prussia and Austria in 1864 and (Northern Schleswig) returned to Denmark in 1920. Warming expressed support, in letters, for France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. He made financial contributions to a secret fund that should support Danish-minded Schleswigian farmers in buying farms and prevent Germanization of Northern Schleswig. In a letter of 1898 to his son Jens, he regrets that the Højre – the conservative party – would lose an upcoming election and expresses concern that anarchy and socialism will eventually rule.
The Orchid genus Warmingia Rchb.f. and dozens of vascular plant species (IPNI) has been named to his honour. The same is the case for a number of fungi, e.g. the smut fungus Microbotryum warmingii (Rostr.) Vánky and the gall fungus Arcticomyces warmingii (Rostr.) Savile. Warming Land - a peninsula in northernmost Greenland is named for him.
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais has organized a series of 'Eugen Warming lectures in Evolutionary Ecology' since 1994.
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