Stanley A. Cain
University of California, Santa Cruz
June 19, 1902 - April 1, 1995
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Scientific Discipline: Evolutionary Biology Membership Type:
Emeritus
(elected 1970)
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Renowned ecologist Stanley A. Cain was one of the first scientists to establish pollen analysis as a paleoecological resource for characterizing past ecosystems. In 1941, he published Foundations of Plant Geography, which distilled a large amount of scientific work from varying disciplines into one of the most comprehensive and insightful ecological studies ever written. Cain founded the Department of Conservation at the University of Michigan in 1950, the first academic department of its kind in the country. He became the first ecologist to hold a powerful position in the federal government when he was appointed the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks in 1965. Under Cain’s persistent urgency, the Department of the Interior realized the importance of preserving the nation’s environment, and it adopted the role as the protector of the nation’s natural resources. He also served as a chairman for the President’s Committee on Multiple Use of the Coastal Zone.
Cain received his B.S. from Butler University in 1924 and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1927 and 1930, respectively. Through the 1930s and 1940s, he taught botany at several colleges, including Butler University, Indiana University, and the University of Tennessee. He became a botanist in 1946 at the Cranbrook Institute of Science and worked there for four years. He left Cranbrook to teach conservation at the University of Michigan, where he founded his department (of which he was the chairman until 1961). Highly invested in ecological improvements, Cain served as the vice president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Society for Study of Evolution in 1954, the president of the Ecological Society in 1958, and the vice president of the International Botanical Congress in 1959. For his recognition and improvement of environmental issues in the nation, he received the American Botanical Society’s Merit Citation in 1956, and for his work on the Leopold Committee Report on Wildlife Management in National Parks, he earned the Department of Interior’s Conservation Award in 1964.
