The 10% law of energy flow in an ecosystem was proposed by

Concept

An ecological energy budget tracks how energy captured at one trophic level becomes available to the next level.

The ten percent law states that, on average, only about one-tenth of the energy at one trophic level is transferred to the next; the rest is used in life processes or dissipated as heat.

Application

Raymond Lindeman developed the trophic-dynamic view of ecosystems and quantified energy transfer between trophic levels. This work is the basis of the ten percent law, so the credited scientist is Lindeman.

Contrast

• Lindeman connected trophic levels with quantitative energy transfer in ecosystem analysis.

• Hückel is chiefly associated with quantum-chemical descriptions of conjugated molecules, not trophic energy transfer.

• Elton made major contributions to food chains, ecological niches, and the pyramid of numbers, but the ten percent energy-transfer law is not credited to him.

• "More than one of the above" would require at least two named scientists to share credit for proposing this same law.

• "None of the above" would require every named scientist to lack that credit.

Cross-check

Lindeman's 1942 trophic-dynamic paper explicitly treated energy exchange across trophic levels, which independently matches the law's subject. Therefore, the answer is Lindeman.