John Ernst Weaver

AKA: Dr. John E. Weaver

Born 1884-05-05 Villisca, IA (USA)

Died 1966-06-08
Lincoln, NE (USA)

Buried
Lincoln, NE (USA)
Cremated

Weaver is famous for his studies of the root systems of prairie plants. A student and collaborator of Frederic Clements at the University of Nebraska, he led the study of the responses of prairie plants and the Great Plains to the great drought of the 1930s. He co-authored several important botany textbooks with Clements, but moved beyond Clements' paradigm of plant succession and in recognizing the need to preserve prairies, altered plant ecologists' views of the place of human efforts in preserving the natural world.

President of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences. Wrote over 80 articles and 11 books.

See: Ronald C. Tobey, Saving the Prairies: The Life Cycle of the Founding School of American Plant Ecology, 1895-1955, 1981.

Places Lived

Villisca, IA
Lincoln, NE
Chicago, IL
Pullman, WA
Minneapolis, MN

Author Of

Nonfiction

Keywords

Plant Ecology

Education

Bachelor of Science Degree, 1909, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
Master of Arts Degree, 1911, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
Graduate Studies, 1911, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Graduate Studies, 1912-1913, Washington State College, Pullman, WA
Ph.D, 1916, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN

Occupation

Instructor of Botany
Assistant Professor of Botany
Professor of Botany
Professor of Plant Ecology
Research Associate in Ecology

Places Worked

Washington State College, Pullman, WA
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE
Carnegie Institution of Washington

Honors

Phi Beta Kappa
Sigma Xi
Phi Sigma
Who's Who in America
Fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Men of Science

Associations

Carnegie Institution Paleontologist Ralph Chaney
He is a member of the editorial board of Ecology and Ecological Monographs. He is a member of the American Association of University Professors
The Ecological Society of America, Vice President in 1924-25; President in 1930
Society of American Physiologists
Nebraska Academy of Sciences
Botanical Society of America

Bibliography

Plant Ecology. 1929.
The Environment of the Prairie. 1931.
The Prairie. 1934.
Regeneration of Native Midwestern Pastures under Protection. 1941.
Nature and Degree of Recovery of Grassland from the Great Drought of 1933-1940. 1944.
North American Prairie. 1954.
Native Vegetation of Nebraska. 1965.
Prairie Plants and their Environment: A fifty year study in the Midwest. 1968.

We appreciate corrections and additions to our information about authors, but please read the following guidelines and caveats carefully.

The Nebraska Authors database is based on publicly available sources. Unless you are the author contacting us in person, it helps us if you cite the source or sources of your information. We cannot include unsourced information in the database.
We may be appreciative of information we choose not to include in the publicly available database.
To include an image on an author profile, please send jpg attachment to nebraskaauthors@lincoln.ne.gov. A photo-release agreement is required before the image will be published on this site.
Because of the way we are staffed, expect corrections or additions to take time, sometimes up to three months.
While we initially included some actual links to external URLs in the database, we will in the future no longer provide functioning links. We will instead record the presence of specific external materials in language that we hope will help intelligent users find it themselves. Web rot, in which actual materials remain online but undergo changes in their URLs, is too demanding in terms of staff time for us to hope to keep external links current.

Please copy, fill out the form below, and email it to NebraskaAuthors@lincoln.ne.gov to suggest a change.