Carl F Jordan

During the 1940s and early 50s, Carl F. Jordan spent boyhood summers at his uncle’s hunting and fishing lodge in northern Maine. He enjoyed the wilderness there, especially canoe trips on the Allagash and Penobscot rivers, and deplored the  cutting of the spruce-fir forests by the pulp and paper companies. In 1953, he enrolled at the University of Michigan and majored in forestry, because he believed that it could help him conserve the forests, but in those days, forestry was all about “getting out the cut”.

After he acquired his Ph.D. in plant ecology from Rutgers Univ.in 1966, he joined H.T. Odum in an Atomic Energy Commission project in Puerto Rico, looking at the dynamics of radioactive isotopes in the rain forest following the world-wide atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons.  In 1969, Carl moved to Argonne National Laboratory where he continued studies of radioactive pollution from nuclear power plants.  In 1974, he had the opportunity to lead an ecology project for the University of Georgia to determine energy flow and nutrient cycling in the Amazon Region of Venezuela. In 1980, Carl returned to the School of Ecology in Athens Georgia while continuing tropical research in Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico and Thailand.

In 1993, Carl acquired a farm near Athens Georgia that had once been part of a pre-Civil War cotton plantation and began research on more sustainable ways of farming. He originated the first University course in Georgia on organic farming, and opened the farm to tours and classes interested in sustainable agriculture. Carl retired as Professor Emeritus in 2009, and took his new freedom to begin research for Evolution from a Thermodynamic Perspective, and recently to develop a forum where the controversies raised in that book could be discussed. The forum is available at the website Thermodynamic-Evolution.org