AASP Primary Records Program

VISIONARY ECOLOGIST STANLEY CAIN DIES AT 92; HELPED ESTABLISH ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AT UC SANTA CRUZ

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Stanley A. Cain, a leading ecologist who served as an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of the Interior in the 1960s, died of pneumonia April 1, 1995, at the Hillhaven Extended Care nursing home in Santa Cruz. He was 92 and had suffered from Alzheimer's disease for more than a decade.

Cain most recently had served as an adjunct professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was chairman of a committee that planned UCSC's College Eight, which opened in 1972 with an emphasis on environmental studies. Cain also had served as an environmental consultant to UCSC's founding chancellor, Dean McHenry, before the sprawling 2,000-acre campus opened in 1965.

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 1960s. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson recognized Cain's expertise by appointing him Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, a post he held until 1968.

Born in Indiana in 1902, Cain received his bachelor's degree from Butler University and his Ph.D. in botany from the University of Chicago. He held teaching positions at Butler, Indiana University, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Michigan, where in 1950 he founded the Department of Conservation--the first such academic department in the country. Aside from his federal service, he remained at Michigan until his mandatory retirement in 1972. He then moved to UC Santa Cruz, where he taught actively through the 1970s.

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 wrote two books and published well over 100 articles in scientific journals. In 1927, he leaned out of a biplane to take photographs for his first research paper--the first use of aerial photography in the biological sciences.

Cain is survived by a son, Stephen, of Ann Arbor, MI, and seven grandchildren. His wife, Louise Cain, died in Santa Cruz in 1993.

An informal memorial service for Cain is planned for Saturday, April 29, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Farm and Garden on the UCSC campus. Memorial contributions to the Louise Cain Apprentice Scholarship Fund may be sent to the Friends of the Farm and Garden, Agroecology Program, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064.

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Editor's notes: A 1976 photograph of Cain is available from the UCSC Public Information Office; call Robert Irion at (408) 459-2495. The New York Times contributed to this news release.

(added by O.K. Davis, 7/04) Stanley Cain hosted the First National Pollen Converence at Yale University, in 1953.

Cain (Stanley A.) Papers
Collection number: MS 106 Stanley A. Cain was a professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, from 1979-1994, Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish and Wildlife from 1965-1968, and an internationally recognized authority on conservation and ecology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY (partial! O.K. Davis, 7/04)

Cain, S.A. 1930.
An ecological study of the heath balds of the Great Smoky Mountains. Butler Univ. Bot. Stud. 1: 177--208.

________ 1939.
Pollen Analysis as a Paleo-ecological Research Method. Botanical Review 5: 627-654.

________ 1940.
The identification of species in fossil pollen of Pinus by size-frequency determination. American Journal of Botany 27: 301-308.

________ 1944.
Pollen analysis of some buried soils, Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Bulletin Torrey Botanical Club 71: 11-22.

________ 1944.
Size-frequency characteristics of Abies fraseri pollen as influenced by different methods of preparation. American Midland Naturalist 31: 232-236.

________ 1944.
Foundations of Plant Geography. New York; Harper, 556p. Cain, Stanley Adair 1944. Foundations of plant geography. New York & London, Harper.

Cain, S. A., and Castro, G. M. de O., 1959.
Manual of vegetation analysis. New York, Harper and Row, 325 p.

Cain, S. A., Castro, G. M. de O., Pires, J. M., and Silva, N. T. da, 1956.
Application of some phytosociological techniques to Brazilian rain forest. American Journal of Botany, v. 43, p. 911-941.