Barry Commoner's Science: an Anecdotal Overview

Abstract

Barry Commoner's scientific career is best characterized by his insistent commitment to holistic (as opposed to reductionist) approaches to understanding how living things function and his alertness in bringing the most modern tools from physics and chemistry to bear on the properties of living systems. The pioneering work of his laboratory on the life history of tobacco mosaic virus was widely admired. In addition, his was the first work which used a magnetic resonance technique to investigate biological phenomena. Characteristically, these studies utilized whole, living, functioning organisms. He pushed the limits of sensitivity for measuring small differences in the nitrogen isotopic composition of drainage water to investigate the relative contributions of fertilizer N to the high nitrate levels found in an agricultural watershed. While the conclusion that N applied as fertilizer was responsible for about half of the nitrate pollution initially met with fierce resistance, the methods which he conceived are now widely used. His ideas about the multiple roles of DNA in inheritance were still less warmly received. While being involved in all of this, the Barry whom many of you know best found the time and energy to be a major figure in bringing the dangers of radioactive fallout to public attention, to be a vigorous and effective opponent of the war in Vietnam and to play a leading role in establishing the environmental movement.