Raphael Zon

Raphael Zon (December 1, 1874 – October 27, 1956) was a prominent U.S. Forest Service researcher.

Early life Raphael Zon was born in Simbirsk in the Russian Empire in 1874, to parents Gabriel Zon and Eugenia Berliner. A schoolmate of Lenin's, he fled Russia in 1896 while on bail following arrest for organizing a trade union. Zon and companion Anna Puziriskaya, whom he would later marry, fled to Belgium where he studied in Liège. He spent nine months in London before emigrating to the United States in 1898.

Education

Zon's early studies were in Russia. He attended the "classical gymnasium" in Simbirsk, and, studying "medical and natural sciences," graduating from the Kazan Imperial University with a bachelor's degree in "comparative embryology". In the United States, Zon studied forestry under Bernhard Fernow, Filibert Roth and others at the New York State College of Forestry at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, earning a professional degree of Forest Engineer (F.E.) in the college's first graduating class in 1901. He served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Forestry from 1923-28.

Zon was a "giant" among American foresters, or as Secretary of Agriculture Claude R. Wickard said, the "dean of all foresters of America."

Commemoration

A large stone memorial with plaque commemorating Zon stands at the USDA Cutfoot Sioux Experimental Forest, in Minnesota, near where his ashes were scattered.

Career 1901. U.S. Forest Service Student Assistant and assistant to forest investigations in the East 1907. Chief, Office of Silvics, later Forest Investigations 1920. Special investigations in forest economics 1923-1944. Director, Lakes States Forest Experiment Station, St. Paul, Minnesota 1923-1928. Director, Cloquet Forest Experiment Station, University of Minnesota 1944. Retired, U.S. Forest Service

Accomplishments 1908. Proposed the establishment of decentralized U.S. Forest Experiment Stations 1914. Charter member, Ecological Society of America 1918. National Research Council, Division of Agriculture, Botany, Forestry, Fisheries and Zoology Executive Committee 1923-1928. Editor-in-chief, Journal of Forestry 1928. International Congress of Soil Science, American vice president of the subcommision of forest soils 1930. Charles Lathrop Pack Forest Education Board 1940. New York World's Fair "Foreign-born citizens judged to have made the most notable contributions to American democracy in the past 100 years" Fellow, Society of American Foresters 1952. Gifford Pinchot Medal, Society of American Foresters 2005. U.S. Forest Service Centennial Congress Science Leadership Award Authored or co-authored roughly 200 articles in professional journals, business and development publications, or popular magazines