George M. Woodwell

George Masters Woodwell (October 23, 1928 – June 18, 2024) was an American ecologist. He founded several programs in ecology, first at Brookhaven National Laboratory then at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and then at the Woods Hole Research Center, now known as Woodwell Climate Research Center, which he founded in 1985.

Woodwell is best known for his work on the effects of ionizing radiation on forest ecosystems, his work to have the pesticide DDT banned from use in the United States, and his work to call attention to the threat of climate change as a result of combustion of fossil fuels. Woodwell was one of the first scientists to sound the alarm about climate change, testifying before Congress about climate change impacts in 1986.

Woodwell was a founding board member of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Early life and education Woodwell was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to parents who were educators: Philip McIntire Woodwell and Virginia Sellers. He spent his childhood summers on his family's 140-acre farm in York, Maine. He attended the Boston Latin School. He received a bachelor's degree in biology in 1950 from Dartmouth College. He served as a Lt. (j.g.) in the United States Navy from 1950 to 1953. He held a master's degree and a PhD in Botany from Duke University which he received in 1958.

In 1961, Woodwell began working at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In a seminal experiment at Brookhaven, Woodwell placed a source of ionizing gamma radiation (Cesium-137, 9500 Curies) at the center of an Pine–oak forest and, over the course of ten years, documented the changes in structure and function of the forest plants. He concluded what is now widely accepted, that organisms with the most sophisticated structure will die first when exposed to chronic stress. Simpler organisms are more resilient to chronic stress. He extrapolated to posit that the results he found in the Long Island forest ecosystem were also true of the global ecosystem: that natural systems will degrade in a predictable pattern when exposed to chronic stress.

Woodwell's research on pesticides focused on DDT where he and fellow scientists were among the first to warn of the harmful effects of DDT on wildlife. That work helped lead to a ban on the use of DDT in the US. It was this group of scientists and lawyers who established the Environmental Defense Fund in 1967 as a result of their work on DDT.

In 1986, Woodwell testified before Congress about climate change impacts. It was the first ever Congressional hearing on climate change. His testimony detailed the threat of global permafrost thaw and the importance of forests. and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1990. and in 2001, he was awarded the Volvo Environment Prize.

In 2020, the Woods Hole Research Center was renamed to the Woodwell Climate Research Center to honor Woodwell and to emphasize the scientific focus on climate change.

Books A World to Live In: An Ecologist's Vision for a Plundered Planet (MIT Press, 2016) Nature of a House: Building a World That Works (Island Press, 2009) Forests in a Full World (Yale University Press, 2001) with Fred T. Mackenzie Biotic Feedbacks in the Global Climatic System: Will the Warming Feed the Warming? (Oxford University Press, 1995) with Kilaparti Ramakrishna World Forests for the Future: Their Use and Conservation (Yale University Press, 1993) The Earth in Transition: Patterns and Processes of Biotic Impoverishment (Cambridge University Press, 1991)