One of ecology’s most important and wisest voices was Dr. Paul Bigelow Sears, a native of Ohio and educated at Ohio Wesleyan and the universities of Nebraska and Chicago. He was an instructor in botany at Ohio State in 1915 and was assistant professor of botany at Nebraska from 1919 to 1925, and associate professor from 1925 until 1927 when he moved to the University of Oklahoma as a professor and head of botany (1927-1938). In 1938, he became the professor of botany at Oberlin College in Ohio and from 1950 to 1960 served as professor of conservation and chairman of the Yale University Conservation Program in Connecticut. He authored Deserts on the March in 1935 and the book became an instant conservation classic, was a Book of the Month Club selection, and went into numerous printings at the University of Oklahoma Press.