Ruth Myrtle Patrick (1907-2013) was a pioneering ecologist and taxonomist whose extraordinary career at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia spanned over six decades. In 1947, an opportunity arose for Patrick to lead a new kind of river survey for the Pennsylvania Sanitary Water Board to study the effects of pollution on aquatic organisms. Patrick leveraged her already extensive scientific network, which included ecologist G. Evelyn Hutchinson, to overcome resistance within the Academy, establish a new Department of Limnology, and carry out the survey, which was a resounding success and brought much needed money to the Academy. As demand for her expertise grew among industrial companies, such as the chemical company DuPont, Patrick became more active in the world of applied science. She repurposed data and instruments from her river surveys to run new experiments, test ecological theories, and conduct long-term ecological studies. Through these studies, she advanced an argument that biologist Thomas Lovejoy dubbed the "Patrick principle," the idea that the ecological health of a body of water could be measured by the relative abundance and diversity of species living there. Patrick was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1970, became a board member of DuPont in 1975, and received two of the most prestigious awards in ecology: the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America in 1972 and the Tyler Ecology Award in 1975. This article analyzes Patrick's unusual success in bridging the worlds of science and industry and her unusual ability to cross, and redefine, the perceived boundary between basic and applied fields in biology. It argues that Patrick's position at the Academy, an institution of natural history that was both willing and able to accept money from industrial corporations, is key to understanding her success in, and influence on, the field of river ecology.

中文翻译：

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重新定义边界：1947 年至 1975 年，费城自然科学学院的露丝·默特·帕特里克 (Ruth Myrtle Patrick) 的生态项目

露丝·默特尔·帕特里克 (Ruth Myrtle Patrick，1907-2013 年) 是一位先驱生态学家和分类学家，她在费城自然科学学院的非凡职业生涯跨越了 60 多年。1947 年，帕特里克有机会为宾夕法尼亚州卫生水委员会领导一项新的河流调查，以研究污染对水生生物的影响。帕特里克利用她已经广泛的科学网络，包括生态学家 G. Evelyn Hutchinson，克服了学院内部的阻力，建立了一个新的湖沼学系，并进行了调查，取得了巨大的成功，并为学院带来了急需的资金。随着化学公司杜邦等工业公司对她的专业知识的需求不断增长，帕特里克在应用科学领域变得更加活跃。她将河流调查的数据和仪器重新用于进行新的实验、测试生态理论和进行长期的生态研究。通过这些研究，她提出了一个论点，生物学家托马斯·洛夫乔伊称之为“帕特里克原理”，即水体的生态健康可以通过生活在那里的物种的相对丰度和多样性来衡量。Patrick was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1970, became a board member of DuPont in 1975, and received two of the most prestigious awards in ecology: the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America in 1972 and the Tyler Ecology Award in 1975 年。这篇文章分析了帕特里克在连接科学和工业世界方面的非凡成功，以及她跨越和重新定义的非凡能力，生物学基础领域和应用领域之间的感知界限。它认为帕特里克在学院的职位是理解她在河流生态领域取得成功和影响的关键，学院是一个愿意并能够接受工业公司资金的自然历史机构。