People of Interest

Homer Scott Swingle is known as the father of pond management and made significant contributions to aquaculture by establishing methods for creating self-sustaining fish populations, which provided inexpensive protein sources during challenging times. He also played a key role in expanding the Auburn University Fisheries Department into a leading institution for fishery research and education.

Dr. Banerjee has eight years of experience restoring and reclaiming disturbed desert lands. Her work focuses on mine waste reclamation and riparian restoration. She has experience in a broad range of vegetation, physical and hydraulic soil characterization, and microbial analyses and survey techniques. She has written literature reviews covering a wide range of topics including soil clogging of infiltration basins for wastewater recharge, saline groundwater mitigation and reclamation in riparian environments, and bacterial diversity of...

Born in the UK in 1927, Irving went on to complete his undergraduate training in geology at Cambridge. In June of 1951, he was recruited to assist British geophysicist, Keith Runcorn, whose pioneering studies of paleomagnetism provided early evidence in support of the theory of continental drift. They collected samples from the Torridonian Sandstone of Northwest Scotland for a paleomagnetic study. This work was to become the start of Irving’s PhD.

Irving was also instrumental...

Walter C. Rawls, Jr., scientist, lawyer, was born in Richmond, Virginia. His sociological and scientific investigations have taken him to many countries of the world as a consultant to governments and world organizations. He is acknowledged in national and international directories and is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the New York Academy of Sciences. For the past six years he has actively worked with the Albert Roy Davis...

GEORGIUS AGRICOLA was born at Glauchau, in Saxony, on March 24th, 1494, and therefore entered the world when it was still upon the threshold of the Renaissance; Gutenberg’s first book had been printed but forty years before; the Humanists had but begun that stimulating criticism which awoke the Reformation; Erasmus, of Rotterdam, who was subsequently to become Agricola’s friend and patron, was just completing his student days. The Reformation itself was yet to come, but...

Alick Bartholomew (1930-2015) studied geology and geography at the University of Cambridge and University of Chicago. He was part of the editorial team that in 1962 published Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. In 1971 he founded the Turnstone Press, publisher of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, with a vision to reconcile science with a spiritual view of the world. In 1984 he started Gateway Books in Bath, England, continuing the Turnstone vision as well as introducing scientific paradigms,...

James DeMeo, Ph.D., is a research scientist and former university professor, now Director of the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab, which he founded in 1978. His work and research is interdisciplinary, from cross-cultural, historical studies on the effects of drought and deserts on the origins of warfare and social violence, into laboratory experiments on cosmic cycles and life-energy subjects, and extensive confirming research on Wilhelm Reich's sex-economic and orgone biophysical findings. He has published over 100...

Robert Louis Dressler was born on June 2, 1927, and raised during the Great Depression in rural Taney County, Missouri. Taney County is in the Ozark Mountains, a fiercely independent but poor people. His father, Mryl, was an electrician who farmed 30 acres of rocky ground to put food on the table. While cutting wood in 1937, Myrl’s electric saw kicked back and cut his arm, and he died four days later of a pulmonary...

MASANOBU FUKUOKA (1913-2008) was a farmer and philosopher who was born and raised on the Japanese island of Shikoku. In 1975 he wrote The One-Straw Revolution, a best-selling book that described his life's journey, his philosophy, and farming techniques. This book has been translated into more than twenty-five languages and has helped make Fukuoka a leader in the worldwide sustainable agriculture movement He continued farming until shortly before his death in 2008 at the age...