Robert Harding Whittaker (December 27, 1920 – October 20, 1980) was an American
plant ecologist, active in the 1950s to the 1970s. He was the first to propose the
five kingdom taxonomic classification of the world's biota into the
Animalia
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage in ...
,
Plantae,
Fungi,
Protista
A protist () is any eukaryotic organism (that is, an organism whose cells contain a cell nucleus) that is not an animal, plant, or fungus. While it is likely that protists share a common ancestor (the last eukaryotic common ancestor), the excl ...
, and
Monera
Monera (/məˈnɪərə/) (Greek - μονήρης (monḗrēs), "single", "solitary") is a biological kingdom that is made up of prokaryotes. As such, it is composed of single-celled organisms that lack a nucleus.
The taxon Monera was first p ...
in 1969.
[Hagen, Joel B. (2012)]
Five kingdoms, more or less: Robert Whittaker and the broad classification of organisms
. ''BioScience'', 62 (1): 67-74. He also proposed the Whittaker
Biome Classification, which categorized biome-types upon two abiotic factors: temperature and precipitation.
Whittaker was elected to the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
in 1974, received the
Ecological Society of America's
Eminent Ecologist Award in 1981, and was otherwise widely recognized and honored. He collaborated with many other ecologists including George Woodwell (Dartmouth), W. A. Niering, F. H. Bormann (Yale) and G. E. Likens (Cornell), and was particularly active in cultivating international collaborations.
Early life
Born in
Wichita, Kansas, he obtained a
B.A. at Washburn Municipal College (now
Washburn University) in
Topeka, Kansas, and, following
military service, his
Ph.D. in Biology at the
University of Illinois in 1948.
Career
Whittaker held teaching and research positions at
Washington State College in
Pullman, Washington
Pullman () is the largest city in Whitman County, located in southeastern Washington within the Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest. The population was 29,799 at the 2010 census, and estimated to be 34,506 in 2019. Originally founded as Thr ...
from 1948 to 1951, and then moved Hanford Laboratories Aquatic Biology
Unit near
Richland, Washington.
In 1954, he was hired as an instructor in the Department of Biology of Brooklyn College, the City University of New York. In the 1960s, he worked at the
University of California, Irvine and
Cornell University.
Family
Whittaker married biochemist Clara Buehl (then a coworker at Hanford Laboratories) in 1952.
They had three children. Clara was diagnosed with cancer in 1972, and she later died December 31, 1976.
Whittaker married graduate student Linda Olsvig in 1979. He himself was diagnosed with lung cancer and died October 20, 1980.
Works
*Robert H. Whittaker ''Communities and Ecosystems'', Macmillan, 1975.
*Robert H. Whittaker(Ed), ''Classification of Plant Communities, 1978 (Handbook of Vegetation Science)'', Kluwer Academic Publishers,
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whittaker, Robert
Cornell University faculty
American ecologists
1920 births
1980 deaths
Ecological succession
People from Wichita, Kansas
Plant ecologists
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Deaths from lung cancer in New York (state)
Brooklyn College faculty