Clements, Frederic E. (1874–1945)

Frederic clements was a founding figure in ecology, whose theory of plant succession helped consolidate the discipline in the early 20th century and continues to influence both scholarly and lay thinking about vegetation dynamics to this day.

Born in 1874 in Lincoln, Nebraska, Clements studied under Charles E. Bessey at the University of Nebraska, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1894 and a doctorate in 1898. Surrounded by the rapid conversion of prairie to farmland, he conducted exhaustive inquiries into native grasses in the Great Plains, pioneering the use of the quadrat as a method of quantitative measurement of vegetation. His Phytogeography of Nebraska (1898, coauthored with Roscoe Pound), Development and Structure of Vegetation (1904), Research Methods in Ecology (1905), and Plant Physiology and Ecology ...