Arthur Galston
He identified riboflavin and other flavins as what are called phototropins, photoreceptor proteins for phototropism (the bending of plants toward light), challenging the prevailing view that carotenoids were responsible.
[1] As a graduate student in 1943, Galston studied the use of 2,3,5-triiodobenzoic acid (TIBA) to encourage the flowering of soybeans and noted that high levels had a defoliant effect.
As chairman of Yale's botany department, Galston's ethical objections led President Nixon to end the use of Agent Orange.
[3] Inspired by doctors like microbiologist Paul de Kruif[4] but unable to afford medical school, Galston enrolled at Cornell's Agricultural College which was free for citizens of New York State.
[4] The University of Illinois offered Galston a teaching assistantship for graduate work, so he went to Champaign-Urbana to study botany and biochemistry.
[7] His research focused on finding a chemical means to make soybeans flower and fruit earlier, so that they could mature before the end of the growing season.
[4] After a year as an instructor at Yale University in 1946–1947, Galston returned to the California Institute of Technology to work with James Bonner as a senior research fellow.
[1][10] In 1950 Galston accepted a Guggenheim Fellowship to spend a year working with Hugo Theorell at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut, was also closer to family members in New York City and work opportunities for Galston's wife, Dale Judith Kuntz.
[3] At Yale, Galston continued to do research in the areas of auxin physiology,[11] photobiology,[12] plant hormones,[13] protoplasts and polyamines.
[14][15] Using microspectrophotometric measurements, he was the first researcher to report that phytochromes were located in plant nuclei, a result that would be confirmed using molecular techniques over 30 years later.
[17][10] In 1951, biological warfare scientists at Fort Detrick, Maryland, began investigating defoliants based upon Galston's Ph.D. discoveries with TIBA.
In 1972, he described his viewpoint:[18] I used to think that one could avoid involvement in the antisocial consequences of science simply by not working on any project that might be turned to evil or destructive ends.
[18] The complex mangrove community lining the estuaries is virtually completely killed by a single spray with agent Orange and regeneration takes several decades, at least...
[6] Galston and U.S. geneticist Matthew S. Meselson appealed to the U. S. Department of Defense to investigate the human toxicology of Agent Orange.
[19] The research conducted by the Department of Defense led to the discovery that Agent Orange caused birth defects in laboratory rats.
[18] With Ethan Signer of MIT, Galston was one of the first two American scientists invited to visit the People's Republic of China.
[6] After his retirement as a biologist in 1990, he became affiliated with Yale's Institution for Social & Policy Studies, where he helped to found the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.
[24] Galston also co-founded the National Senior Conservation Corps (Grey is Green), a non-profit organization dedicated to helping older Americans to create positive environmental change and lead more sustainable lives.
