George M. Woodwell

He founded several programs in ecology, first at Brookhaven National Laboratory then at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and then at the Woods Hole Research Center, now known as Woodwell Climate Research Center, which he founded in 1985.

He concluded what is now widely accepted, that organisms with the most sophisticated structure will die first when exposed to chronic stress.

It was this group of scientists and lawyers who established the Environmental Defense Fund in 1967 as a result of their work on DDT.

[4][1] Woodwell conducted extensive research on carbon budgeting in North American forests and estuaries.

In 1972, Woodwell held a conference, titled Carbon and the Biosphere, at Brookhaven with over 50 biologists, climatologists, and oceanographers.

In 1979, the Carter administration asked Woodwell and four other scientists to create a report on the ecological impact of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.

According to James Gustave Speth, then chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, “The report predicted ‘a warming that will probably be conspicuous within the next 20 years,’ and it called for early action.

[1] In 1975, Woodwell started the Ecosystems Center at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory.