George Evelyn Hutchinson (January 30, 1903 – May 17, 1991) was a British ecologist sometimes described as the "father of modern ecology." He contributed for more than sixty years to the fields of limnology, systems ecology, radiation ecology, entomology, genetics, biogeochemistry, a mathematical theory of population growth, art history, philosophy, religion, and anthropology. He worked on the passage of phosphorus through lakes, the chemistry and biology of lakes, the theory of interspecific competition, and on insect taxonomy and genetics, zoo-geography and African water bugs. He is known as one of the first to combine ecology with mathematics. He became an international expert on lakes and wrote the four-volume Treatise on Limnology in 1957. Hutchinson earned his degree in zoology from Cambridge University but chose not to earn a doctorate, of which he came to be proud as he aged. Although born in England, he spent nearly his entire professional life at Yale University in the United States where he was Sterling Professor of Zoology and focused on working with graduate students. Early life and education Hutchinson was born in 1903 to Arthur and Evaline D. Hutchinson. He grew up in Cambridge, England. His father was a mineralogist at the University of Cambridge. Hutchinson grew up surrounded by intellectuals, including two of Darwin's sons. By the age of five, Hutchinson was already collecting aquatic creatures and studying their preferred living environment in aquariums that he manufactured himself. He had a younger brother and a younger sister. He had his early education at Saint Faith's. He went on in 1917 to study at Gresham's School in Norfolk. Gresham's was unique in not focusing on the classics, but including more intensive studies of mathematics and science, along with modern languages and history. It was here that he began to notice that organisms had different chemical environments. Hutchinson was admitted to read zoology at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, graduating in 1925. Personal life Hutchinson married three times. His first wife was Grace Pickford. Grace was also Cambridge educated, she became a well known scientist as well. They were married from 1931 to 1933, when they agreed to a divorce. He met his second wife, Margaret Seal, while on a boat returning to England from India. She was a musician and they shared an appreciation for music, literature, and art. They were married for fifty years, with no children. She died of Alzheimer's in 1983. Hutchinson's