[1][2] Warming wrote a number of textbooks on botany, plant geography and ecology, which were translated to several languages and were immensely influential at their time and later.

[4] External link: Ancestors and descendents[5] He attended high school at Ribe Katedralskole and commenced 1859 studies of natural history at the University of Copenhagen, but left university for three and a half years (1863–1866) to act as secretary for the Danish palaeontologist Peter Wilhelm Lund, who lived and worked in Lagoa Santa, Brazil.

The professorship in botany at the University of Copenhagen became vacant with the death of A.S. Ørsted and Warming was the obvious candidate for a successor.

He joined the International Botanical Congresses in Amsterdam 1877, in Vienna 1905 and in Brussels 1910 and was president of the ‘Association internationale des botanistes‘ (1913).

Warming's aim, and his major lasting impact on the development of ecology, was to explain how nature solved similar problems (drought, flooding, cold, salt, herbivory, etc.)

The subtitle alludes to the title of the book Grundtræk af den almindelige Plantegeografi, published in 1822 (German edn 1823: Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Pflanzengeographie) by J. F. Schouw, co-founder of the scientific phytogeography.

Plantesamfund was translated to German in 1896 as A second, unauthorized, edition was issued during 1902 by Paul Graebner, who put his own name after Warming's on the book's frontispiece, despite no changes to the contents.

Warming's textbook on systematics for his lectures of botany in Copenhagen appeared in several editions and was translated to German, Russian and English and used in foreign universities.

Den almindelige Botanik: En Lærebog, nærmest til Brug for Studerende og Lærere [translated title: General Botany].

His excursion notes were published and are instructive introductions to the environment and plant adaptation in dunes, salt marshes and other habitats: His early experience with vegetation in a tropical region was decisive for his future work.

His collections from Lagoa Santa, 2600 plant species, of which some 370 turned out to be new to science,[1] were treated in a monumental 40-volume and 1400-page work, Symbolæ ad Floram Brasiliæ centralis cognoscendam.

Part I-V. All published in Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter - Naturvidenskabelig og Mathematisk Afdeling, 6.

Having finished the taxonomical work, Warming finally published his ecological study of plant communities in the Lagoa Santa area, with cerrado as the main vegetation type.

Warming issued a lengthy summary in French (1893): Lagoa Santa – Étude de Geographie Botanique.

Portuguese translation: Warming, Eugenio Lagoa Santa: Contribuição para a geographia phytobiologica, by Alberto Löfgren Belo Horizonte, 1908.

Early on in Warming's scientific career, the morphological-organogenetic point of was the leading principle in botanical research, and he soon became one of the most prominent workers in this branch of botany.

His main works from the early period are his thesis on floral development in Euphorbia and on seed plant ovules.

In the late 1880s, after Warming's return to Copenhagen, he swopped research topic with his student Christen Raunkiær, who had traveled along the North Sea coast from Jutland to the Netherlands and published on the phytogeography of coastal vegetation.

Warmings last published work was a renewed attempt to put all plant (including bacteria and algae) life forms into a system.

One of the most important ones is his observations of the vegetation of Greenland and the history of the flora: Warming's collections of leaves, stems and flowers, made during the brief expedition, were examined in detail and the anatomy of a number of species described in a series of papers in Danish.

It was Eugenius Warming's Lehrbuch der ökologischen Pflanzengeographie that must be considered as the starting point of self-conscious ecology.

[22][23] Similarly, Warming's book was decisive in forming the careers of North American naturalists like Henry Chandler Cowles.

[25] Also Frederic Clements was much inspired by Warming when starting to working with succession, but more by Oscar Drude in formulating his concept of vegetational climax in his 1916 book.

[opinion] Especially significant was his inspiration to Christen Raunkiær – his pupil and successor on the chair of botany at the University of Copenhagen.

After his appointment to the professorship in Copenhagen, he gradually took over Japetus Steenstrups power base, most notably as one of three members of the board of the Carlsberg Foundation for 32 years.

In his popularizing book Nedstamningslæren (The theory of descendence; 1915),[27] he reviewed the direct and indirect evidence for common descent of living organisms and for Darwinian natural selection as a process involved in speciation.

... as if we human beings thereby obtained understanding and explanation for anything at all, or circumvented the almighty power that, incomprehensibly to our mind, must have created matter, force, time and infinite space.

He made financial contributions to a secret fund that should support Danish-minded Schleswigian farmers in buying farms and prevent Germanization of Northern Schleswig.

In a letter of 1898 to his son Jens, he regrets that the Højre – the conservative party – would lose an upcoming election and expresses concern that anarchy and socialism will eventually rule.

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais has organized a series of 'Eugen Warming lectures in Evolutionary Ecology' since 1994.