Nancy Guttmann Slack

Nancy Guttmann Slack (August 12, 1930 in New York City - December 2022)[1]was an American plant ecologist, bryologist, and historian of science. She was the president of the American Bryological and Lichenological Society from 2005 to 2007.

Biography

In December 1951 Nancy Guttmann married Glen A. Slack.[2] At Cornell University she graduated in June 1952 with B.Sc. in agriculture[3] and in 1954 with M.Sc.[4] Her master's thesis is entitled Variation of the Small Cranberries in Eastern North America.[5] In the late 1950s and the decade of the 1960s she raised three children and helped her husband's career.[6] In 1971 she received her Ph.D. in ecology from the University at Albany, SUNY. Her Ph.D. thesis, entitled Species diversity and community structure in bryophytes,[7] won the Paul C. Lemon Award.[8] After receiving her Ph.D. she became an assistant professor of biology at Russell Sage College and retired there in 2002 as professor emerita.[9] After formal retirement from Russell Sage College, she engaged in “writing books and magazine articles, teaching ecology, natural history, and botany, birding, singing in an oratorio society, reading, and doing scientific travel with her husband.”[3] She has done research on bryophytes, ecosystems of the U.S. Northeast, the ecology of peatlands, ecological niche theory, and the history of ecology and botany.

In 2012 Nancy G. Slack was the project director for an investigation resulting in the report Alpine Snowbed communities of Mt. Washington and the monitoring of Populations of Rare Bryophytes and Lichens in relation to Future Climate Change Project.[10] She received the 2014 Guy Waterman Alpine Steward Award for her lifetime achievement in alpine ecology and conservation work for mountain wilderness in the American Northeast.[11]

Her husband, an outstanding physicist and inventor, died in 2019, leaving his widow, three children, and six grandchildren.[6] The Russell Sage College sponsors the Glen and Nancy Slack Endowed Award in the Sciences Fund for outstanding juniors or seniors in "biology, pre-medicine or biochemistry."[9]

Selected publications

Articles
  • Vitt, Dale H.; Slack, Nancy G. (1975). "An analysis of the vegetation of Sphagnum-dominated kettle-hole bogs in relation to environmental gradients". Canadian Journal of Botany. 53 (4): 332–359. doi:10.1139/b75-042.
  • Horton, Diana G.; Vitt, Dale H.; Slack, Nancy G. (1979). "Habitats of circumboreal–subarctic sphagna: I. A quantitative analysis and review of species in the Caribou Mountains, northern Alberta". Canadian Journal of Botany. 57 (20): 2283–2317. doi:10.1139/b79-275.
  • Vitt, Dale H.; Slack, Nancy G. (1984). "Niche diversification of Sphagnum relative to environmental factors in northern Minnesota peatlands". Canadian Journal of Botany. 62 (7): 1409–1430. doi:10.1139/b84-192.
  • Slack, Nancy G.; Glime, Janice M. (1985). "Niche Relationships of Mountain Stream Bryophytes". The Bryologist. 88 (1): 7–18. doi:10.2307/3242643. JSTOR 3242643.
  • Abir-Am, Pnina G.; Outram, Dorinda, eds. (1987). "Chapter 5. Nineteenth-Century American Women Botanists: Wives, Widows, and Work by Nancy G. Slack". Uneasy Careers and Intimate Lives: Women in Science, 1789-1979. pp. 77–103. ISBN 9780813512563.
  • Slack, Nancy G. (1990). "Bryophytes and ecological niche theory". Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. 104 (1–3): 187–213. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.1990.tb02218.x.
  • Schmitt, Claire K.; Slack, Nancy G. (1990). "Host Specificity of Epiphytic Lichens and Bryophytes: A Comparison of the Adirondack Mountains (New York) and the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains (North Carolina)". The Bryologist. 93 (3): 257–274. doi:10.2307/3243509. JSTOR 3243509.
  • Slack, Nancy G.; Vitt, Dale H.; Horton, Diana G. (1980). "Vegetation gradients of minerotrophically rich fens in western Alberta". Canadian Journal of Botany. 58 (3): 330–350. doi:10.1139/b80-034.
  • Vitt, Dale H.; Horton, Diana G.; Slack, Nancy G.; Malmer, Nils (1990). "Sphagnum-dominated peatlands of the hyperoceanic British Columbia coast: Patterns in surface water chemistry and vegetation". Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 20 (6): 696–711. doi:10.1139/x90-093.
  • Slack, Nancy G. (1992). "Rare and endangered bryophytes in New York State and Eastern United States: Current status and preservation strategies". Biological Conservation. 59 (2–3): 233–241. doi:10.1016/0006-3207(92)90590-j.
  • Slack, Nancy G.; Hallingbäck, Tomas (1992). "Community and species responses to environmental gradients in suboceanic mires of the west Swedish coast". Annales Botanici Fennici. 29 (4): 269–293. JSTOR 23726236. 1992
  • Slobodkin, Lawrence B.; Slack, Nancy G. (1999). "George Evelyn Hutchinson: 20th-century ecologist". Endeavour. 23: 24–30. doi:10.1016/S0160-9327(99)01182-5.
  • Cleavitt, Natalie L.; Williams, Susan A.; Slack, Nancy G. (2009). "Relationship of Bryophyte Occurrence to Rock Type in Upstate New York and Coastal Maine". Northeastern Naturalist. 16: 67–84. doi:10.1656/045.016.0106. S2CID 86032271.
  • Capers, Robert S.; Slack, Nancy G. (2016). "A Baseline Study of Alpine Snowbed and Rill Communities on Mount Washington, NH". Rhodora. 118 (976): 345–381. doi:10.3119/16-07. S2CID 89811696 – via BioOne.

Books1
  • Slack, Nancy G.; Bell, Allison Williams (1995). AMC Field Guide to the New England Alpine Summits. Appalachian Mountain Club Books. ISBN 978-1-878239-38-9; pbk, 96 pages{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
    • Slack, Nancy G.; Bell, Allison W. (2006). AMC Field Guide to the New England Alpine Summits (2nd ed.). ISBN 978-1929173891; pbk, 104 pages{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Pycior, Helena Mary; Slack, Nancy G.; Abir-Am, Pnina G., eds. (1996). Creative couples in the sciences. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813521886.[12]
  • Slack, Nancy G.; Bell, Allison Williams (2006). Adirondack Alpine Summits: An Ecological Field Guide. Adirondack Mountain Club. ISBN 9781931951180; pbk{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  • Slack, Nancy G. (1 January 2010). G. Evelyn Hutchinson and the Invention of Modern Ecology. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-16138-0.[13][14]
  • Tuba, Zoltán; Slack, Nancy G.; Stark, Lloyd R., eds. (6 January 2011). Bryophyte Ecology and Climate Change. ISBN 9781139493208.[15]

References
  1. "Remembering Dr. Nancy Guttmann Slack". ADK:Adirondack Mountain Club. January 17, 2023.
  2. "Nancy Gutmann's Troth; Marriage to Glen A. Slack Will Take Place in December". The New York Times. October 25, 1951.
  3. "Bachelors of Science in Agriculture". The Cornell Daily Sun. Vol. 68, no. 181. 6 June 1952.
  4. "Class of '52". Cornell Alumni Magazine, March/April 2011. p. 61.
  5. Slack, Nancy Guttmann (1954). Variation of the Small Cranberries in Eastern North America. Cornell University.
  6. "Glen Slack 1928–2019". glenvillefuneralhome.com.
  7. Slack, Nancy G. (1971). "Species diversity and community structures in bryophytes". Ph.D. Dissertation, State University of New York at Albany — Department of Biological Sciences.
  8. "People and Places". BioScience. 23 (9): 546–548. 1973. doi:10.2307/1296485. ISSN 0006-3568. JSTOR 1296485.
  9. "Glen and Nancy Slack Endowed Award in the Sciences Fund". Russell Sage College.
  10. Slack, Nancy G.; Capers, Robert; Duckett, Jeffrey; Bell, Allison; Storms, Kate; Greene, Evelyn; Armstrong, Kathie (December 2012). "Alpine Snowbed communities of Mt. Washington and the monitoring of Populations of Rare Bryophytes and Lichens in relation to Future Climate Change Project" (PDF).
  11. "2014 Alpine Steward Award Winner: Dr. Nancy Slack". The Waterman Fund.
  12. Sime, Ruth Lewin (July 19, 1996), Science, New Series, 273 (5273): 316, doi:10.1126/science.273.5273.316, JSTOR 2889732{{citation}}: CS1 maint: untitled periodical (link)
  13. Kingsland, Sharon (2012). "Review of G. Evelyn Hutchinson and the Invention of Modern Ecology. By Nancy G. Slack; Foreword by, Edward O. Wilson". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 87 (1): 47–48. doi:10.1086/663892. ISSN 0033-5770.
  14. Tjossem, Sara (2012). "Review of G. Evelyn Hutchinson and the Invention of Modern Ecology by Nancy G. Slack". Isis. 103 (1): 213–214. doi:10.1086/666451. ISSN 0021-1753.
  15. Shaw, Jonathan (2012). "Review of Bryophyte Ecology and Climate Change edited by Zoltán Tuba, Nancy G. Slack, and Lloyd R. Stark". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 87 (3): 252. doi:10.1086/666782. ISSN 0033-5770.
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