Lauren Blakely Hitchcock (March 18, 1900 – October 15, 1972) was a chemical engineer and early opponent of air pollution.
He received his undergraduate (1920), master's (1927), and doctorate degree (1933) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
[1] Hitchcock became president of the Southern California Air Pollution Foundation (APF)[3][4] in 1954, which had been formed to fight smog.
Hitchcock identified automobile exhaust and backyard incinerators as the cause and advised that significant steps would be needed--comparable to wartime efforts--to fight the problem in a meaningful way.
[1] In 1963, Hitchcock was appointed to the faculty at University at Buffalo, where his work papers are now archived.