Two Long-Time Friends Share Tyler Prize For Their 30-Year Environmental Study; Obituary: Lewis Thomas

Year Environmental Study Author: Phil Beck Date:January 10, 1994, pp.23 Year Environmental Study F. Herbert Bormann and Gene E. Likens, whose ongoing, 30- year ecosystem study has led to fundamental discoveries that have changed environmental law and international policy, have received the 1993 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement. The $150,000 prize, established by John and Alice Tyler in 1973 and administered under the auspices of the University of Southern California, was presented last month in Los Angeles. The Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study, centered in the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire, came about when Bormann, an agricultural scientist, joined forces with Likens, a zoologist, while they were both on the faculty of Dartmouth College in the early 1960s. Together they conceived and developed the idea of using a small watershed to conduct whole-forest ecosystem experiments. Through conventional scientific methods, long-term observations, and ecological modeling, they were able to test hypotheses in field experiments. The pair discovered the phenomenon of acid rain (G.E. Likens, F.H. Bormann, et al., Environment, 14[2]:33-40, 1972; G.E. Likens, F.H. Bormann, Science, 184:1176-9, 1974), which led to the first international symposium on acid rain and further studies on the subject throughout the United States and Canada. Research connected with the Hubbard Brook study played a major role in the development of the Clean Air Act of 1990. Another Hubbard Brook study sparked national discussion of the effects of forest clearcutting, pointing out the loss of soil fertility and chemical degradation of stream water caused by this foresting method (G.E. Likens, F. H. Bormann, Ecological Monographs, 40[1]:23-47, 1970). "We were using the chemistry of stream water much like a physician uses the chemistry of urine or blood . . . to judge the health of the whole forested landscape, and that turned out to be a very valuable way of proceeding," Likens says. In an investigation with colleague Kathleen C. Weathers (K.C. Weathers, G.E. Likens, F.H. Bormann, et. al., Nature, 319:657-8, 1984), they collected and analyzed cloud water, and showed that it was significantly more polluted than rain water. Their conclusions demonstrated that measuring air pollution must include cloud water inputs and dry fallout, in addition to acid rain. Their study led to the establishment of a North American network of cloud water research stations. The Hubbard Brook study, supported by the National Science Foundation and the Forest Service, has attracted more than 125 collaborators. Bormann left Dartmouth in 1966 to join the faculty of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Science, where he taught until his retirement in 1992. He remains Oastler Professor of Forest Ecology, emeritus, at Yale. Likens went from Dartmouth to Cornell University in 1969, where he held several positions in the section of ecology and systematics, including chairman in 1982-83. He left Cornell in 1983 to create and direct the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. Although their academic paths have diverged, their collaboration has remained constant over three decades, which Likens attributes to several factors: "We both have a broad view of ecology, an ecosystem point of view," he says. "I think the fact that we brought very different strengths to bear made the team successful, and we were always able to think and write together, which I've found to be unusual." Bormann, 71, earned his B.S. in agricultural science from Rutgers in 1948 and his Ph.D. in plant ecology from Duke University in 1952. Likens, 59, received his B.S. from Manchester College in Indiana in 1957 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1962, both in zoology. Likens observes that public consciousness of the environment today is quite different from what it was when he and Bormann began their collaboration. "In the mid- to late '50s, if you mentioned that you were an ecologist on the main street of any city," he says, "they wouldn't have had a clue of what that meant. Now, of course, ecology and ecologists have become household words." The reason for this change, Likens notes, is not necessarily good: "Everything you read and hear and see continues to talk about a continuing or new environmental assault on our living space. . . . There are new ones that crop up every day. "I feel very strongly that the basic research that I do I want to have relevance to real-world problems, and I also care a lot about trying to communicate my scientific findings to decision-makers and the public." Lewis Thomas, a noted biologist, physician, educator, and medical school dean who also was well known as an award- winning author, poet, and philosopher on science, medicine, and other matters, died December 3 in New York of Waldenstrom's disease, a condition resembling lymphoma. He was 80 years old. Thomas, who was president, emeritus, of Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center and a professor, emeritus, at Cornell University Medical College at the time of his death, did research in the areas of immunology, virology, endotoxins, and histocompatibility. He published more than 200 scientific papers. The son of a doctor and a nurse, Thomas received his B.S. from Princeton University in 1933 and his M.D. from Harvard University in 1937. In the 1940s and early 1950s he held positions in the medical schools of Harvard, Johns Hopkins University, Tulane University, and the University of Minnesota, as well as the United States Naval Medical Research Unit during World War II. He was a professor and chairman of the department of pathology at New York University-Bellevue Medical Center from 1954 to 1958 and was chairman of the department of medicine from 1958 to 1966. He was dean of New York University School of Medicine from 1966 to 1969, a professor and chairman of the department of pathology at Yale-New Haven Medical Center from 1969 to 1973, and dean of Yale University School of Medicine in 1972-73. From 1973 to 1980 he was president and CEO at Memorial Sloan-Kettering; he was chancellor there from 1980 to 1983. In addition, he held numerous positions with other medical schools, hospitals, foundations, societies, corporations, and government task forces and advisory committees. Thomas's literary career began with poems he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly while still an intern in Boston. He first received wide recognition for essays, originally published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which were compiled in the book The Lives of a Cell (New York, Viking Press, 1974), for which he won the National Book Award in 1974. Hundreds of thousands of copies were sold, and it was translated into 11 languages. That effort was followed by The Medusa and the Snail (Viking, 1979), which won the American Book Award and the Christopher Award; The Youngest Science (Viking, 1983), his personal medical memoir; Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony (Viking, 1983); Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Notes of a Word Watcher (Boston, Little, Brown, 1990), essays on language; and The Fragile Species (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992). He won numerous awards, including two that were named for him, the Lewis Thomas Award for Communications from the American College of Physicians in 1986, and the Lewis Thomas Prize from Rockefeller University in 1990. He received 20 honorary degrees in science, laws, letters, and music. He was a member and an officer of a host of societies, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

Two Long-Time Friends Share Tyler Prize For Their 30-Year Environmental Study; Obituary: Lewis Thomas

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