Cain, Stanley Adair, 1902-

University of California, Santa Cruz, professor (Environmental Studies) 1979-1994, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife (1965-1968), internationally recognized authority on conservation and ecology.

Biography

Stanley Adair Cain was born in Indiana in 1902. He received his bachelor's degree from Butler University and his Ph.D. in botany from the University of Chicago and held teaching positions at Butler, Indian University, the University of Tennessee and the University of Michigan . In 1950 he joined the University of Michigan as the Charles Lathrop Pack Professor of Conservation and Botany and founded the Department of Conservation, the first such academic department in the country. He remained at Michigan until his mandatory retirement in 1972. Cain was called "one of the foremost thinkers in the field of plant ecology" by William Stapp, professor emeritus of resource planning and conservation at the University of Michigan . "What was most significant to me and many students who worked under him was that he approached his work from ecological, economic, political and social perspectives. Everything he did had a very interdisciplinary perspective -- and that was really new thinking in the 1950s." After retirement from University of Michigan he moved to University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was chairman of a committee that planned UCSC's College Eight, which opened in 1972 with an emphasis on environmental studies. Cain had also served as an environmental consultant to UCSC founding chancellor, Dean E. McHenry, before the sprawling 2,000 acre campus opened in 1965. Most recently Cain had served as an adjunct professor of environmental studies at UCSC. Cain's academic specialty was botany, but he was widely acknowledged for pioneering the study of the relationship between people and the environment. Partly because of his work, conservation became an increasing national concern from the 1940s through the 1950s. He was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson and held the post until 1968. Among his many honors, Cain was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and had served as president of both the Ecological Society of America and the first National Botanical Congress of America . He was also named a Benjamin Franklin Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London and received the Wildlife Society 's Aldo Leopold Medal and four honorary doctorates. Cain was also the author of two books, " Foundations of Plant Geography " and " Manual of Vegation Analysis " and the author of over 100 articles in scientific journals. Stanley A. Cain died April 1, 1995.