Sir Arthur George Tansley FLS,
FRS (15 August 1871 – 25 November 1955) was an
English botanist and a pioneer in the science of
ecology. Educated at
Highgate School,
University College London and
Trinity College, Cambridge, Tansley taught at these universities and at
Oxford, where he served as
Sherardian Professor of Botany until his retirement in 1937. He found the
New Phytologist in 1902 and served as its editor until 1931. Tansley was a pioneer of the science of
ecology in Britain, being heavily influenced by the work of Danish botanist
Eugenius Warming, and introduced the concept of the
ecosystem into biology. Tansley was a founding member of the first professional society of ecologists, the Central Committee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation, which later organised the
British Ecological Society, and served as its first president and founding editor of the
Journal of Ecology. Tansley also served as the first chairman of the British
Nature Conservancy. Tansley was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1915, and knighted in 1950. The
New Phytologist publishes regular Tansley Reviews, while the New Phytologist Trust awards a Tansley Medal, both named in his honour.