DEAN F. MARTIN, Distinguished Service Professor and director of the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa, views his surroundings through the eyes of a chemist: "Ours is a world of coordinate compounds." A faculty member since 1964, Martin has directed his work toward natural environmental management of noxious chemicals and organisms.
Martin and his colleagues have been focusing their attention on the Florida red tide, a condition marked by the sudden offshore appearance of dinoflagellates that release fish-killing neurotoxins. His pioneering work in the search for allelopathic organisms -- plants that produce chemicals adverse to other organisms -- led to significant advances in the effort to mitigate the effects of red tide in Florida coastal waters.
An outdoors enthusiast, Martin is also working to halt the spread of the submersed aquatic plant Hydrilla verticillata -- "the plant from Hades". Inadvertently introduced into the...
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