Victor Ernest Shelford
| Victor Ernest Shelford | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 22, 1877 Chemung, New York |
| Died |
December 27, 1968 (aged 91) Urbana, Illinois |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields |
zoology ecology |
| Institutions | University of Illinois |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago, West Virginia University |
| Known for | ecology, Ecological succession |
| Influences | H. C. Cowles, C. B. Davenport, Carl Semper |
| Influenced | Warder Clyde Allee, Charles Sutherland Elton |
Victor Ernest Shelford (September 22, 1877 – December 27, 1968) was an American zoologist and animal ecologist who helped to establish ecology as a distinct field of study. Shelford's early visits to Volo Bog in Northern Illinois helped establish its ecological significance. Volo Bog became the first purchase of the Illinois Nature Conservancy, with the help of the fund-raising efforts of Cyrus Mark, the first president of the Illinois Nature Conservancy.
Shelford was born in Chemung, New York, the eldest son of Alexander Hamilton Shelford and Sarah Ellen Rumsey Shelford. After ten years of schooling, he taught at public schools in Chemung County, New York in 1894. He attended Cortland Normal and Training School for two years and took a teaching certificate, and returned to teaching at public schools from 1897 to 1899. From 1899 to 1901 he attended West Virginia University, where he was influenced by his uncle William E. Rumsey, the assistant state entomologist. In 1901, West Virginia University's president, Jerome H. Raymond, accepted a professorship at the University of Chicago, where he secured a scholarship for Shelford, who soon transferred. Here he took a position as associate and instructor in zoology from 1903 to 1914. Much of his early work was greatly influenced by Henry C. Cowles. Shelford wrote his doctoral thesis on "Tiger Beetles of Sand Dunes," which described the relation between beetle populations and vegetational succession, a topic of interest to Cowles. He completed his paper in 1907 and received a Ph.D. on June 11 of the same year. The next day he married Mary Mabel Brown, with whom he would have two children.
His thesis work led him to five further publications on "Ecological Succession," which were published in the Biological Bulletin in 1911 and 1912. By 1913 he published one of his great works on ecology, Animal Communities in Temperate America. He took a position for the University of Illinois, where he would end up spending most of his career, in 1914 as an assistant and associate professor of zoology. From then he would help organize the Ecological Society of America (ESA), and became its first president in 1916. He helped compile a Naturalist's Guide to the Americas, published in 1926, for the ESA. This helped him with his later work, The Ecology of North America (1963).
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