Ian McTaggart-Cowan
| Ian McTaggart-Cowan | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
June 25, 1910 Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Died | April 18, 2010 (aged 99) Saanich, British Columbia, Canada |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | |
| Alma mater | |
| Thesis | Distribution and variation in deer (Genus Odocoileus) of the Pacific coastal region of North America (1935) |
| Doctoral advisor | Joseph Grinnell |
| Doctoral students | |
| Other notable students | Charles Krebs |
| Known for | Nature documentaries |
| Influenced | David Suzuki |
| Spouse | Joan Racey |
| Children | 2 |
Ian McTaggart-Cowan FRSC OC OBC (June 25, 1910 – April 18, 2010) was a Scottish-Canadian zoologist, conservationist, and television presenter. He has been called "the father of Canadian ecology". He was the brother of meteorologist Patrick McTaggart-Cowan.
McTaggart-Cowan was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and moved to North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada with his family when he was three years old. He completed studies at the University of British Columbia and then at the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied deer under Joseph Grinnell. Upon returning to Canada, he took up a position at the provincial museum in British Columbia (later renamed the Royal British Columbia Museum) for six years, before taking a professorship at the University of British Columbia, where he established the first university wildlife program in Canada. McTaggart-Cowan was active in early studies of British Columbia Provincial Parks and Canada's Rocky Mountain National Parks. More so than many other ecologists of the time, McTaggart-Cowan stressed the importance of studies of individual variation, in addition to population-based studies.
McTaggart-Cowan supervised more than 100 graduate students; many became eminent scientists in academia and government. According to his own recollection, at one point, the wildlife division of every Canadian province that had one was being headed by one of McTaggart-Cowan's former students. Among the more than 275 publications which he authored or coauthored is the comprehensive, encyclopedic four-volume Birds of British Columbia, to which he was a major contributor.
...
Wikipedia