Rene Dubos

Rene Jules Dubos (1901-1982) wiki

"He was the author of 20 books including So Human an Animal, which won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1969. His last book, Celebrations of Life, was published last fall...

"Aside from a period from 1942 to 1944 when he was professor of tropical medicine at Harvard Medical School, his scientific career was spent at the Rockefeller Institute and Rockefeller University. His early work was in soil bacteria, human fungal infections and the microbes that cause dysentery, pneumonia and tuberculosis. In the 1940's he showed the feasibility of obtaining germ-fighting drugs from microbes - a pioneering achievement in immunology that helped pave the way for antibiotics...

"In the 1960's Dr. Dubos found himself thinking and writing more about environmental depredations than about his chosen speciality. His books from that period were largely concerned with the problem. The book he wrote with Barbara Ward, Only One Earth, served as the basis for the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm and is still cited as a fundamental work in the field.

"The scientist had been working recently on an international convocation planned for June at the Rene Dubos Center for Human Environment in the Bronx to mark the 10th anniversary of the Stockholm conference."

Affiliations

 * Cofounder, Children of the Green Earth
 * Cofounder, Association for Humanistic Psychology
 * 1982 Earth Day Honoree, Earth Society Foundation
 * Advisory Council (1975), Planetary Citizens

Biography

 * Carol L. Moberg, "René Dubos, Friend of the Good Earth: Microbiologist, Medical Scientist, Environmentalist", 2005.

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * Frank Fenner
 * Scientists' Institute for Public Information