Cowles, Henry Chandler (1869–1939)

US botanist and ecologist. His work emphasized the relations between vegetation and geology, and his scholarly studies helped establish the new scientific discipline of ecology. He made major contributions to studies of the vegetation in the forests, dunes, and prairies of the region around Lake Michigan and northern Illinois.

He was born in Kensington, Connecticut. He gained his PhD at the University of Chicago in 1894. He taught at Gates College (Nebraska) 1894–95, spent the summer of 1895 as a field assistant to the US Geological Survey, then joined the faculty of the University of Chicago 1898–1934. He was instrumental in establishing forest reserves in Illinois; he cofounded the Ecological Society of America in 1915, serving as its president in 1918. He wrote The Plant Societies of Chicago and Vicinity (1901); he was coauthor of the once standard Textbook of Botany for Colleges and Universities (2 vols. 1910–11); and he edited the Botanical Gazette from 1925 until his retirement from the Chicago faculty.