A factual, accurate, complete history of ecology as a discipline has yet to be written. When that history is finally compiled, the British ecologist Charles Sutherland Elton will stand as one of the disciplines leading mentors of the twentieth century.

Charles Elton was born March 29, 1900, in Manchester, England. His interest in what he later called "scientific natural history" was sparked early by his older brother Geoffrey. By the age of 19, Charles Elton was already investigating species relationships in ponds, streams, and sand-dune areas around Liverpool.

His formal education in ecology was shaped by an undergraduate education at Oxford University, and by his participation in three scientific expeditions to Spitsbergen in the Arctic (in 1921, 1923, and 1924), the first one as an assistant to Julian Huxley. Even though an undergraduate, he was allowed to begin an ecological survey of animal life...