Ted J. Case

Ted Joseph Case (19 July 1947 – 31 December 2015) was an American biologist and ecologist affiliated with the University of California, San Diego.¹ He joined the faculty of UC San Diego in 1978, and was later elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004.² Case was known for his contributions to ecology, including multiple books on community and theoretical ecology.

Born on 19 July 1947 in Sioux City, Iowa,³ Case attended the University of Redlands and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1969. He received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in 1974 and pursued postdoctoral research at the University of California, Davis. In 1975, Case joined Purdue University as a faculty member, but in 1978 he moved to the University of California, San Diego.¹

The University of California Press published Ted J. Case and Martin L. Cody's book Island Biogeography in the Sea of Cortéz in 1983.⁴ Case went on to coedit with Jared Diamond the book Community Ecology, which was published by Harper & Row in 1986 as a broad overview of the field including chapters contributed by 35 authors.⁵ In 1999, Oxford University Press published Case's An Illustrated Guide to Theoretical Ecology, which includes analysis of the mathematical formulas underpinning theoretical ecology, supplemented with graphs and other visualizations.⁶ In 2004, Case was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.² He "died of a sudden heart attack while trail running on December 31, 2015", aged 68 years old.¹