James Hemphill Brown (born September 25, 1942) is an American biologist and academic.
He is an ecologist, and as of 2001[update] a Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of New Mexico.
[1] His work has focused on 3 distinct aspects of ecology: 1) the population and community ecology of rodents and harvester ants in the Chihuahuan Desert, 2) large-scale questions relating to the distribution of body size, abundance and geographic range of animals, leading to the development of the field of macroecology, a term that was coined in a paper Brown co-authored with Brian Maurer of Michigan State University.
In 2005 he was awarded the Robert H. MacArthur Award by the Ecological Society of America for his work, including his work toward a metabolic theory of ecology.
[1] Brown received a bachelors with honors in 1963 before obtaining his PhD in 1967:[1] Honors James Brown has received include:[1] In 1977 Brown, in collaboration with Diane Davidson and James Reichman, started a research project in the Chihuahuan Desert near Portal, Arizona to study competition between rodents and ants and their influence on the annual plant community.