Danish Botanist 1841-1924

Johannes Warming was a Danish botanist who is regarded as the founder of plant ecology. The term ecology had been used before, but Warming was the first to describe the fundamental questions that must be addressed in a study of plant ecology and the first to popularize detailed research into the ways plants relate to their environments.

Warming was born November 3, 1841, in Mandø, Denmark. His father was a Lutheran minister there on one of the northern Frisian Islands. Warming loved living there on the coast and he later wrote about his homeland's marshlands and dunes. From his early observations there, he compiled written records that are still important for the study of the ecology of the area's plants today.

Early Research on Structure and Adaption

In his early twenties, while he was a student, Warming became the secretary for a Danish zoologist, P...