Commoner, Barry

(born May 28, 1917, Brooklyn, N.Y.) U.S. biologist and educator. He studied at Harvard University and taught at Washington University and Queens College. His warnings, since the 1950s, of the environmental threats posed by modern technology (including nuclear weapons, use of pesticides and other toxic chemicals, and ineffective waste management) in such works as his classic Science and Survival (1966) made him one of the foremost environmentalist spokesmen of his time. He was a third-party candidate for U.S. president in 1980.

Commoner, Barry (1917– ) biologist, educator, environmental activist; born in New York City. A graduate of Columbia University, with a Ph.D. from Harvard (1941), he taught at Washington University (St. Louis) (1947–76) before becoming head of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, a New York City energy and environmental research center. Through lecturing and writing he had a wide influence as an environmentalist; Time magazine called him "a professor with a class of millions." He became increasingly more outspoken on behalf of environmental causes and ran for president of the U.S.A. in 1980 on the Citizen's Party ticket. His book Making Peace with the Planet appeared in 1990.