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Ruth Patrick: The River Doctor
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16847 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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9 / 1989 |
2,929 Words |
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Michael Woods and Linda Joyce Forristal
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The remarkable 60-year scientific career of Ruth Patrick might be summarized in a single sentence: She spent her life in the headwaters of science.
As one of the world's premier limnologists, and perhaps the world authority on diatoms, she has also waded through the waters quite literally. Clad in hip boots and pith helmet, Patrick has mucked around in rivers and streams throughout the world collecting samples of aquatic organisms and then developing techniques for using them as barometers of the severity of water pollution.
Patrick, in fact, has been called the "River Doctor" in tribute to her skill in diagnosing the health of rivers and streams, and her delight in making house calls.
But the term applied most frequently and perhaps most accurately to this small, quiet authority on the biology of rivers and streams is pioneer. G. Evelyn Hutchinson, the renowned Yale University zoologist, says that Patrick has done more than any individual--with the exception of Charles Elton of Oxford University--to establish ecology as a full-fledged science.
In 1948, when few scientists were concerned about pollution or environmental preservation, Patrick led a study that stands as a milestone in the development of ecology. The investigation of water pollution in a 475-square-mile region of the Conestoga Basin in Pennsylvania represented a fundamental methodological advance in biology. For it used a multidisciplinary research team to analyze the effects of pollution on the full diversity of species in an aquatic community--rather than on a single species.
Patrick also helped to forge the close links that exist today between academia and industry. "She was out in the field doing consulting work for industry while her fellow scientists were sticking close to their benches," reports Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
John Cairns of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, who worked with Patrick for almost 20 years, says her work helped to kindle the spirit of environmental concern in American industry. "She has pioneered the ability to communicate the usefulness of biological assessment to industrial people using their own terms."
Hutchinson, recalling the early years of environmentalism in the 1960s and 1970s, notes that her "energy, sincerity, and knowledge . . . earned her a reputation of being the only person who can talk and be listened to about river pollution to both scientists and industrialists."
Patrick carried environmental concern directly into corporate boardrooms. She was the first environmentalist and the first woman elected to the board of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., for example, and also served on the board of the Pennsylvania Power & Light Company.
She played a similar role in influencing government efforts to clean up polluted waterways by serving on an astounding number of advisory panels. She has been adviser to former Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, the Departments of Energy and the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and
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