Guide to the Stanley A. Cain papers, 1960-1994 MS.106

Language of Material: English

Contributing Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz

Title: Stanley A. Cain papers

creator: Cain, Stanley Adair

Identifier/Call Number: MS.106

Physical Description: 6.25 Linear Feet 7 boxes

Date (inclusive): 1945-1994

Abstract: This collection includes biographical materials, correspondence, writings, speeches and conference proceedings as well as leaf book text and drawings, research notes and research material not by Cain.

Physical Location: Collection stored, in part, off-site at NRLF: Advance notice is required for access.

Collection is open for research.

Property rights for this collection reside with the University of California. Literary rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. The publication or use of any work protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use for research or educational purposes requires written permission from the copyright owner. Responsibility for obtaining permissions, and for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information on copyright or to order a reproduction, please visit guides.library.ucsc.edu/speccoll/reproduction-publication.

Stanley A. Cain papers, MS 106, Special Collections, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Gift of the Cain Family.

Stanley Adair Cain was born in Indiana in 1902. He received his bachelor's degree from Butler University and his Ph.D. in botany from the University of Chicago and held teaching positions at Butler, Indiana University, the University of Tennessee and the University of Michigan. In 1950 he joined the University of Michigan as the Charles Lathrop Pack Professor of Conservation and Botany and founded the Department of Conservation, the first such academic department in the country. He remained at Michigan until his mandatory retirement in 1972. Cain was called "one of the foremost thinkers in the field of plant ecology" by William Stapp, professor emeritus of resource planning and conservation at the University of Michigan. "What was most significant to me and many students who worked under him was that he approached his work from ecological, economic, political and social perspectives. Everything he did had a very interdisciplinary perspective -- and that was really new thinking in the 1950s." After retirement from University of Michigan he moved to University of California, Santa Cruz, where he was chairman of a committee that planned UCSC's College Eight, which opened in 1972 with an emphasis on environmental studies. Cain had also served as an environmental consultant to UCSC founding chancellor, Dean E. McHenry, before the sprawling 2,000 acre campus opened in 1965. Most recently Cain had served as an adjunct professor of environmental studies at UCSC. Cain's academic specialty was botany, but he was widely acknowledged for pioneering the study of the relationship between people and the environment. Partly because of his work, conservation became an increasing national concern from the 1940s through the 1950s. He was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson and held the post until 1968. Among his many honors, Cain was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and had served as president of both the Ecological Society of America and the first National Botanical Congress of America. He was also named a Benjamin Franklin Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London and received the Wildlife Society's Aldo Leopold Medal and four honorary doctorates. Cain was also the author of two books, " Foundations of Plant Geography " and " Manual of Vegetation Analysis" and the author of over 100 articles in scientific journals. Stanley A. Cain died April 1, 1995.

This collection includes biographical materials, correspondence, reprints, writings, speeches and conference proceedings as well as leaf book text and drawings, research notes. Also included is research material not by Cain.