Trout and Char of the World

3: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Three Trout Biologists Who Shaped Our Understanding of Trout and Trout Streams

Kurt D. Fausch, James Prosek, and Kevin R. Bestgen

doi: https://doi.org/10.47886/9781934874547.ch3

When one approaches the study of trout, their taxonomy, biology, and ecology, he or she encounters a daunting mountain of literature. When libraries were in buildings and journals were bound in volumes, one could escape to the quiet tomb of basement shelves and read for months and years before gaining a reasonable grasp of the field of trout biology. It stands to reason then that we owe what we know about trout and their habits to the large number of biologists who have studied them over the past century or more. Some have worked long years in the field collecting data from comparative studies or field experiments while others conducted experiments in the laboratory, each contributing key papers to the mounting literature. During the mid-20th century, a group of early trout biologists made great strides that advanced the field during a formative stage, including Clarence Tarzwell (1936), K. Radway Allen (1951), Ed Cooper (1953), Jim McFadden (1961), Don Chapman (1966), Tom Northcote (1969), David Le Cren (1969), Bob Hunt (1976), and Malcom Elliott (1985), to name only a few. Many more also have made important contributions, during that era and since.