Gene Fowler, a biology professor at Pomona College and one of the pioneers in establishing Pomona's environmental analysis program, died Nov. 1 at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center after suffering an illness.

Fowler, known as Doc Fowler tohis colleagues and friends, joined the Pomona faculty in 1993 and taught many courses in biology. Conservation Biology and Comparative Endocrinology were among his most popular courses.

Fowler had a half-position at Pomona and taught courses at other schools as well.

Known for his commitment to the EA program at Pomona, he was instrumental in the establishment of the EA study abroad program at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Richard Hazlett, a geology professor at Pomona, worked closely with Fowler in the advancement of the EA program.

Gene was certainly a human being of great conviction when it came to conservation and the need to educate people about the natural world, Hazlett said. I think he felt most alive and readily interested studying the environment, whether that took the form of monitoring Argentinian penguins or leading students on his spectacular trips to explore pollution issues, migratory birds and natural history around the Salton Sea.

Fowler's research involved the behavioral endocrinology of birds and mammals. He studied the influence of sex and stress hormones on reproductive behavior and success. For his dissertation, he studied the behavior ofMagellanic penguinsand their reproductive and stress endocrinology.

From 1995 to 2001, he was the director of the Robert J. Bernard Biological Field Station of the Claremont Colleges. After 2001, he remained involved in the Bernard Field Station and was the chair of the advisory committee.

Biology professor Nina Karnovsky met Fowler in the early 1990s because of their similar research interest in penguins.

He had such incredible knowledge of so many topics. You could ask him a question about anything, and he would have the answer, Karnovsky said. He knew so much about the local ecology around here. It was incredibly impressive that he could recall all of this information.

Link:
Pomona Remembers Biology Professor Gene Fowler