Dr. Frank Egler
Ecologist Dr. Frank Egler
Frank E. Egler was born in New York City in 1911. As early as 1926, he began studies of the vegetation at his family’s new summer home in the hills of Norfolk, Connecticut. In 1943, he made it his home, called it Aton Forest, pronounced “Aten”, based on the Egyptian sun-god of Pharaoh Akh-en-aton.
He committed himself to over 50 years of low-key, long-term, studies of natural processes in this high elevation place, and to a place which has grown to 1,500 acres in North Norfolk and Colebrook. In 1968, Frank married Happy Kitchel Hamilton, of Greenwich, a noted photographer and conservationist. She had assembled the Spaulding Pond natural area preserve in South Norfolk. He helped her to protect it with conservation easements. They enjoyed a wonderful decade together until her death in 1978. Frank later died Aton Forest on December 26, 1996.
Frank traveled widely, and published five books (three others were completed or in progress at his death, along with a variety of other manuscripts), and some 400 professional papers on vegetation change and right-of-way management. In 1990, he formally created Aton Forest Ic., as a non-profit educational and scientific organization, to ensure the perpetuation of the Aton Forest lands and the studies he initiated there. Starting in 1945 he began to run Aton Forest as an Ecological Field Station and published annual reports.
Rachel Carson
In addition to his groundbreaking research, Frank Edwin Egler actively assisted Rachel Carson (1907–1964) on chapters of Silent Spring. Read this article for some details about Egler’s influence on Carson. LINK
In 2009, Linda Lear wrote the definitive biography of Rachel Carson: Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature.
In 2016, William Dritschilo wrote an epistolary biography about Egler, Magnificent Failure: Frank Egler and the Greening of American Ecology, An Epistolary Biography which provides information on Egler and Carson.
Happy Kitchel Egler
Happy Kitchel Egler was a noted philanthropist, conservationist, and nature photographer of international renown. She met Frank through their common interests in ecology and land preservation, and they married in 1968. They were married for 10 years until she died from cancer in 1978.
A passion for wildlands protection ran deep in the Kitchel family. In 1961, Happy’s mother, Helen Binny Kitchell, gave the 600 acres, the ‘Kitchel Wilderness’, a state-designated Natural Area Preserve (NAP) forever protected from logging, to the Algonquin State Forest in Colebrook, CT. The wild land Spaulding Pond Preserve was the creation of Happy Kitchel and to this day continues with Aton Forest holding the conservation easement on what is now a 950 acre preserve. After her death, Frank Egler maintained a keen eye on the Spaulding Pond Preserve and contributed property to it. Aton Forest is currently working to become the owner of this marvelous preserve.
Other Ecologists
Frank E. Egler studied under a number of pioneering ecologists, including George E. Nichols, Egler’s Ph.D. mentor at Yale, William S. Cooper, his M.S. mentor at the University of Minnesota, Henry C. Cowles, who Egler considered his undergraduate mentor at the University of Chicago. He also studied under Frederic E. Clements and Henry A. Gleason, who were considered elder statesmen of that first generation of ecologists.
Throughout his education, subsequent careers, and lifelong research into forest succession, he corresponded with countless botanists, ecologists, preservationists, naturalists, and scientists from around the world. As part of Dr. Egler’s archives, Aton Forest holds a large collection of his correspondence with these scientists.
Resources
Frank Edwin Egler 1911-1996
Resolution of Respect
Learn More | Rachel Carson
Rachel Carson: Home
Frank Egler and Rachel Carson
Learn more about their collaboration on Silent Spring
Fall 2017 | Colebrook Land Conservancy Newsletter
Kitchel Wilderness