Jean H. Langenheim (née Harmon; September 5, 1925 – March 28, 2021[1]) was an American plant ecologist and ethnobotanist, highly respected as an eminent scholar and a pioneer for women in the field.

She wrote what is regarded as the authoritative reference on the topic: Plant Resins: Chemistry, Evolution, Ecology, and Ethnobotany, published in 2003.

She was the first female faculty member in the natural sciences and first woman to be promoted to full professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Her research was summarized in two publications, and resulted in a large historical collection and a continued effort by ESA to document women's contributions to the field.

[10] Her dissertation was entitled, "Vegetation and environmental patterns in the Crested Butte Area, Gunnison County, Colorado " and was subsequently published in Ecological Monographs.

She has conducted field work in the western United States, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Australia, New Zealand, Angola, Kenya, Ghana, and the Amazon rainforest.

After completing her PhD, Langenheim advanced her career in teaching and plant ecology research at a variety of institutions.

She was a founding member of the Adlai E. Stevenson College, where she lived as the faculty preceptor for several years, and helped develop the graduate programs at the university.

[15][10] She was a visiting professor at Harvard and the Universidade de Pará in Brazil in 1974, and served as Chair of the biology department at UCSC from 1974-1976.

In 1961, she began conducting research at Harvard University to study fossilized plant resin, also known as amber, and the ecology and evolution of resin-producing trees in the tropics.

[4][15] It was this work that led to her career-long chemical ecology research on tropical resin-producing trees, including the mechanisms for producing resin and the role they play in insect and disease defense.

She wrote what is regarded as the authoritative reference on the subject: Plant Resins: Chemistry, Evolution, Ecology, and Ethnobotany, published in 2003.

The results of this second survey were published in the Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics in 1996 in an article entitled "Early History and Progress of Women Ecologists: Emphasis Upon Research Contributions".