Robert Ulanowicz
| Robert Ulanowicz | |
|---|---|
| Born |
17 September 1943 Baltimore, Maryland |
| Residence | Gainesville, Florida |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | University of Maryland University of Florida |
| Alma mater | Johns Hopkins University |
| Notable awards | 2007 Ilya Prigogine Medal |
Robert Edward Ulanowicz is an American theoretical ecologist and philosopher of Polish descent who in his search for a unified theory of ecology has formulated a paradigm he calls Process Ecology. He was born September 17, 1943 in Baltimore, Maryland.
He served as Professor of Theoretical Ecology at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Maryland until his retirement in 2008. Ulanowicz received both his BS and PhD in chemical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1964 and 1968, respectively.
Ulanowicz currently resides in Gainesville, Florida, where he holds a Courtesy Professorship in the Department of Biology at the University of Florida. Since relocating to Florida, Ulanowicz has served as a scientific advisor to the Howard T. Odum Florida Springs Institute, an organization dedicated to the preservation and welfare of Florida's natural springs.
Ulanowicz uses techniques from information theory and thermodynamics to study the organization of flows of energy and nutrients within ecosystems. Although his ideas have been primarily applied in ecology, many of his concepts are abstract and have been applied to other areas in which flow networks arise, such as psychology and economics.
Though Ulanowicz began his career modeling ecological systems using differential equations, he soon reached the limits of this approach. Realizing that any ecosystem is a complex system, he decided to move away from what he saw as the inappropriate use of the reductionist approach, and instead began to work towards development of theoretical measures of the ecosystem as a whole, such as ascendency. Gradually, he came to appreciate the ecosystem behavior is not simply a matter of "mechanics with noise," but rather an intricate interplay between opposing tendencies—autocatalytic-like self-organization and entropic decay. This natural conversation could be followed quantitatively using information-theoretic measures applies to networks of trophic processes.
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