Biography:Nancy Guttmann Slack

Short description: American plant ecologist, bryologist, and historian of science (1930–2022)

Nancy Guttmann Slack (August 12, 1930 – December 21, 2022) 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

Nancy Guttmann was born in New York City on August 12, 1930. In December 1951 she married Glen A. Slack. At Cornell University she graduated in June 1952 with B.Sc. in agriculture and in 1954 with M.Sc. Her master's thesis is entitled Variation of the Small Cranberries in Eastern North America. In the late 1950s and the decade of the 1960s she raised three children and helped her husband's career. 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, won the Paul C. Lemon Award. After receiving her Ph.D. she became an assistant professor of biology at Russell Sage College and retired there in 2002 as professor emerita. 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.” 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. 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.

Her husband, an outstanding physicist and inventor, died in 2019, leaving his widow, three children, and six grandchildren. 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."

Guttmann Slack died on December 21, 2022, at the age of 92.

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. 
• Abir-Am, Pnina G., ed (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. Rutgers University Press. pp. 77–103. ISBN 9780813512563. https://books.google.com/books?id=X7vjCMcM9lQC&pg=PA77. 
• 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. 
• 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.  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. 
• 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. https://doi.org/10.3119/16-07. 

Books

• 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. https://books.google.com/books?id=JQEJAQAAMAAJ; pbk, 96 pages 
  • Slack, Nancy G.; Bell, Allison W. (2006). AMC Field Guide to the New England Alpine Summits (2nd ed.). Appalachian Mountain Club Books. ISBN 978-1929173891; pbk, 104 pages 
• Pycior, Helena Mary, ed (1996). Creative couples in the sciences. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813521886. 
• Slack, Nancy G.; Bell, Allison Williams (2006). Adirondack Alpine Summits: An Ecological Field Guide. Adirondack Mountain Club. ISBN 9781931951180; pbk 
• Slack, Nancy G. (1 January 2010). G. Evelyn Hutchinson and the Invention of Modern Ecology. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-16138-0. https://books.google.com/books?id=4KaqSD2AuPwC. 
• Bryophyte Ecology and Climate Change. Cambridge University Press. 6 January 2011. ISBN 9781139493208. https://books.google.com/books?id=rHE2KmGdwLEC. 

External links

• "Impact Show 306 Barbara Brabetz and Dr. Nancy G. Slack". mrstprctors. June 28, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWPsay_YOTI.