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Robert Harding Whittaker (1920-1980) was an American vegetation ecologist, active in the 1950s through the 1970s. He was born in Wichita, Kansas, obtained a B.A. at Washburn Municipal College (now Washburn University) in Topeka, Kansas, and, following military service, his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. He held teaching and research positions at Washington State College in Hanford, Washington, the Hanford National Laboratories (where he pioneered use of radioactive tracers in ecosystem studies), Brooklyn College, University of California-Irvine, and, finally Cornell University. Extremely productive, Whittaker was a leading proponent and developer of gradient analysis to address questions in plant community ecology. He provided strong empirical evidence against some ideas of vegetation development advocated by Frederic Clements. Whittaker was most active in the areas of plant community analysis, succession, and productivity. He also first proposed the five-kingdom taxonomic classification of the world's biota into the Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista, and Monera. He was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1974, received the Ecological Society of America's 'eminent ecologist' award in 1980, and was otherwise widely recognized and honored. Whittaker collaborated with many other ecologists, and was particularly active in cultivating international collaborations.

Ecologists completing Ph.D.'s under Whittaker include, Walter Westman, Robert Peet (now at University of North Carolina), Susan Bratton, Thomas Wentworth (now at North Carolina State University), Owen Sholes, Mark Wilson (now at Oregon State University), Linda Olsvig Whittaker, Kerry Woods.

• Robert H. Whittaker Communities and Ecosystems, Macmillan, 1975. ISBN 0-02-427390-2
• Robert H. Whittaker(Ed), Classification of Plant Communities, 1978 (Handbook of Vegetation Science), Kluwer Academic Publishers, ISBN 90-6193-566-0

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