Sir Arthur George Tansley FLS, FRS[1] (15 August 1871 – 25 November 1955) was an English botanist and a pioneer in the science of ecology.

[1] He was a pioneer of the science of ecology in Britain, being heavily influenced by the work of Danish botanist Eugenius Warming,[3] and introduced the concept of the ecosystem into biology.

Although a successful businessman, George Tansley's passion had been education after he started attending classes at the Working Men's College when he was 19.

[1] Tansley's interest in science was sparked by one of his father's fellow volunteer-teachers, who was described as "an excellent and enthusiastic field botanist".

After completing Part I of Tripos in 1893, he returned to University College London as an assistant to Oliver, a position he retained until 1907.

In 1894 he returned to Cambridge and completed Part II of Tripos,[1] and received a degree with first class honours.

[11][12] In 1923 he resigned his position at Cambridge and spent a year in Vienna studying psychology under Sigmund Freud.

[1] Tansley founded the botany journal New Phytologist in 1902 to serve as "a medium of easy communication and discussion between British botanists on all matters .

[13] Tansley's introduction to ecology came in 1898 when he read Warming's Plantesamfund (in its German translation, Lehrbuch der ökologischen Pflanzengeographie).

Reading the book provoked him to "[go] out into the field to see how far one could match the plant communities Warming had described for Denmark in the English countryside".

[3] In 1904 Tansley suggested the formation of a central body for the systematic survey and mapping of the British Isles.

This led to the establishment of the Central Committee for the Survey and Study of British Vegetation by Tansley, Moss, William Smith and T. W. Woodhead,[2] with the support of Marcel Hardy, F. J. Lewis, Lloyd Praeger and W. M. Rankin.

[3] In 1911 Tansley, in conjunction with the British Vegetation Committee, organised the first International Phytogeographic Excursion (IPE).

[4]Though the organisms may claim our prime interest, when we are trying to think fundamentally, we cannot separate them from their special environments, with which they form one physical system.

[2] Tansley was introduced to psychology by a former student, Bernard Hart, who worked as a doctor in mental hospitals near London.

[11] In 1920 he published The New Psychology and its Relation to Life, one of the first books that attempted to introduce the ideas of Freud and Carl Jung to a general audience.