Forest Walden Stearns, Emeritus Professor of Botany at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Past President of the American Institute of Biological Sciences
[AIBS], passed away at Found Lake, Wisconsin, on 8 September 1999, at the age of 80.
Stearns was a member of AIBS since its inception, served on the AIBS governing board from
1974 to 1980, was a member of the AIBS executive committee from 1978 to 1980, and served
as President-Elect in 1981 and President in 1982.
Forest Stearns was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin [on Sept. 10, 1918], and went on to
receive an undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 1939. In 1947, he received his
PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin, where he was the first of famed plant
ecologist John T. Curtis's doctoral students to examine the composition, structure, and
nature of vegetation dynamics in Wisconsin. He taught at Purdue University from 1947 to
1957 and then served for 12 years as Project Leader with the US Forest Service, first at
the Southern Forest Experiment Station in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and then at the North
Central Forest Experiment Station in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.
In 1968, he joined the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as Professor of Botany and headed
the Department of Botany from 1973 to 1977. He retired in 1987.
Stearns also served as Treasurer, Vice President, President (1975-1976), and Past
President of the Ecological Society of America and served on the editorial board of the
society's journal Ecology as both Botanical Editor and
Coordinating Editor. In 1980, he received the Ecological Society's Distinguished Service
Award. In later years, he also served as Editor of the Transactions
of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters. Stearns was a highly
regarded and honored scientist and gained a national and international reputation for his
contributions to forest ecology, forest history, and urban ecology. He was a fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science and received numerous awards from the
Nature Conservancy, ESA, US International Landscape Ecology Association, and state and
regional public service groups for his work.
His botanical research varied from the vegetation dynamics of Wisconsin's northern
hardwood forests to wetland ecology and from studies of rare and endangered species to
plant phenology. Forest Stearns was particularly passionate about the terra incognita of
modern science--the city and its physical and biological dimensions. He found the city a
fascinating object of study and proceeded to do a great deal to establish, by practical
example, a discipline of urban ecology in the 1970s.
Stearns brought with him a passion for his work, an unselfish attitude to help others,
and a devotion to use scientific information to shape public policy discussions about the
natural world. Throughout his career, he touched the lives of numerous students and
professional colleagues, all of whom gained a better understanding of the impact of humans
on the natural world and an understanding of their role in understanding, preserving,
protecting, and managing natural resources. He was emotionally attached to the northern
forests of Wisconsin and died peacefully beneath a stand of large red pines that was
reminiscent of those forests before the logging era.
