du Pont de Nemours and Company to work as a research chemist at its Experimental Station in Wilmington.

His leadership skills inspired Henry B. du Pont to appoint him to the executive committee of the Greater Wilmington Development Council.

By 1968 Delaware had experienced rioting following the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and National Guard troops were still on the streets of Wilmington on the orders of the conservative Democratic Governor, Charles L. Terry, Jr. Peterson seemed to have a fresh, progressive approach for addressing these and other issues and was drafted by Republican state leaders to run for governor.

Delaware's executive departments had been run by commissions, appointed by the governor, but with considerable policy independence, and overlapping terms.

The Act was unsuccessfully challenged in court, and Peterson led the environmental movement in Delaware by sporting a badge on his lapel that said, "To Hell with Shell!

"[2] These were a breathtaking number of changes for normally conservative Delaware – Peterson appointed the first person of color, Arva Jackson, to the University of Delaware's board of trustees, insisted on the hiring of black people to the State Police, pressed for the state's open housing law and relaxed abortion laws.

In 1972, Delaware became the last state to outlaw flogging as a form of punishment, removing Red Hannah, America's last whipping post.

As a result, when he sought a second term the next year, he won the Republican primary by 8% of the vote over former Lieutenant Governor David P. Buckson.

In the general election, he was defeated by Democratic former Lieutenant Governor and then State House minority leader Sherman W. Tribbitt by a vote of 117,274 (51%) to 109,583 (48%) after announcing an unexpected tax increase in the middle of the campaign.

In November 1973, Peterson worked with then-Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller to establish the Commission on Critical Choices for Americans.

[7] Every time something wonderful has happened when I was president and since then in the field of environmental quality in this country or on a global basis, Russ Peterson has been intimately involved in it.

He fought Ronald Reagan's attempts to weaken environmental regulations, pushed the society beyond its traditional remit into areas like energy policy, toxic waste and population control.

He hired more scientists, started an environmental curriculum for school children and got Ted Turner to finance the TV series The World of Audubon, narrated by Robert Redford, amongst others.

[4] He also served as president of the International Council for Bird Preservation, as a principal officer in three international environmental organisations, worked for the United Nations on various activities and as chairman of the Center on the Long-Term Biological Consequences of Nuclear War, working with Carl Sagan, Paul R. Ehrlich and Peter Raven to employ scientists to inform world leaders of the dangers of nuclear weapons.