Eville Gorham


Eville Gorham

Gorham in 1984
Born (1925-10-15) 15 October 1925
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Residence USA
Citizenship Canada, US
Fields Ecology, Limnology, Biogeochemistry
Institutions University of Minnesota
Alma mater Dalhousie University
University College London
Doctoral advisor W. H. Pearsall
Known for Acid rain, peatland biogeochemistry, radioactive fallout
Notable awards Benjamin Franklin Medal[1]
G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award[2]
Lifetime achievement award, Society of Wetland Scientists

Eville Gorham (PhD LlD DSc FAAAS FRSC MNAS FESA) is a Canadian-American scientist whose focus has been understanding the chemistry of fresh waters and the ecology and biogeochemistry of peatlands.[3] In the process, Gorham made a number of practical contributions that included discovering the influence of acid rain in lake acidification,[4][5] plus the importance of the biological magnification of radioactive fallout isotopes in northern food chains.[6][7][8][9] The former led to legislation and redesign of the power plants of the world to scrub sulfuric acid, and the latter was an early step toward the establishment of an atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty. Gorham was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1994.[10]

Gorham emphasizes that discovery in science is often the result of chance and serendipity, and encourages students to watch for the opportunities that chance provides.[11] He is recognized as a renaissance scholar[12] who has influenced the careers of others.[13]

Life and career

Gorham grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia as an only child of Shirley and Jimmie Gorham. He was an avid reader at a young age and was inherently drawn to the classroom. He attended Dalhousie University from 1942 to 1947.[14] He first began his biological science career with a degree in botany and continued to pursue his Master's degree at Dalhousie University.[14] However, due to a difference in interests with his advisor Bill Dore, his scientific interests shifted toward the direction of zoology with two other advisors, Dixie Pelluet, and Ronald Hayes. His first thesis displayed that the effects of temperature difference in the development of salmon embryos.[14]

At this point, Gorham decided to shift to field work in order to avoid any further experimentation that involved killing or harming animals. This decision led Gorham to the field of ecology and to pursue his PhD abroad. He originally applied to the University of Sheffield, but they did not answer his letter. In 1947, Gorham received an Overseas Science Research Scholarship by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 in London.[14] Eventually, the University of Sheffield informed him that William Pearsall had moved to London two years prior and suggested contacting him, but Gorham never received a direct response regarding his application. Though Gorham wrote to Pearsall and was accepted as his PhD student at the University College, London.[15] In 1948, he married Ada MacLeod, whom he had met while she was researching child nutrition at Dalhousie.[14]

Gorham began his PhD work studying mineral content of plants in the Lake District and became interested in acidification of ecosystems. After his PhD, he spent time in Sweden conducting a project on Swedish peatlands. He also met Carl Olof Tamm, an associate that was using chemical analysis of rain and snow in his research on forest moss.[16] After returning to England, he worked for the Freshwater Biological Association. It was here that Gorham made some of his most incredible discoveries regarding acid rain and nuclear fallout.

After the death of his father, Gorham and family returned to Canada, where he took a Botany Department position at the University of Toronto.[17] With Alan Gordon, he studied the effects of smelter pollution on the forests around Sudbury and effectively began measure pollution in vegetation, though the significance of the work was overlooked at the time.[18] In 1962, Gorham accepted a position at the University of Minnesota. It was here that Gorham took up environmental activism and eventually started many courses on pollution at the university.[14] Gorham served on multiple environmental committees, including the joint Canadian-U.S. scientific commission under President Carter,[19] and took part in many environmental projects, such as those sponsored by the Royal Society of Canada and U.S. Academy of National Sciences.[14]

Acid Rain and Nuclear Fallout

In 1955, Gorham decided to follow up on some of the research he had heard about in Sweden and analyzed samples of bog water and rain in the Lake District. Depending on the wind, the water either had high amounts of salt from the Irish Sea or high acid content, such as sulfuric acid, from the industrial areas.[4]

Later, while testing for radioactive contamination of reservoir water for a friend, Gorham eventually discovered high, accumulated amounts of radioisotopes in mosses and lichens from around the Lake District.[6]

Selected Works

  1. REDIRECT

References

  1. ↑ Platt, Lucian (2000). "The 2000 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science presented to Eville Gorham". Journal of the Franklin Institute 337 (7): 813–816. doi:10.1016/S0016-0032(00)00058-2.
  2. ↑ Nixon, Scott W. "Hutchinson Award to Eville Gorham". Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union 68: 199. Bibcode:1987EOSTr..68..199N. doi:10.1029/eo068i014p00199-01.
  3. ↑ Gorham, Eville; Lehman, Clarence; Dyke, Art; Clymo, Dickie; Janssens, Jan (2012). "Long-term carbon sequestration in North American peatlands". Quaternary Science Reviews 58: 77–82. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.09.018.
  4. 1 2 Gorham, Eville (1955). "On the acidity and salinity of rain". Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 7: 231–239. doi:10.1016/0016-7037(55)90034-x.
  5. ↑ Schobert, Harold H. (2014). Energy and Society: An Introduction, Second Edition. CRC Press. p. 478ff.
  6. 1 2 Gorham, Eville (1958). "Accumulation of radioactive fallout by plants in the English Lake District". Nature 181: 152–154. doi:10.1038/1811523a0.
  7. ↑ Gorham, Eville (1959). "A comparison of lower and higher plants as accumulators of radioactive fallout". Canadian Journal of Botany 37: 327–239. doi:10.1139/b59-023.
  8. ↑ Kaufman, Scott (2013). Project Plowshare: The peaceful use of nuclear explosives in Cold War America. Cornell University Press. p. 76.
  9. ↑ Young, Wayne (2014). "Life in the fast lane– what’s the rush?". The Guardian, Charlottetown Newspaper.
  10. ↑ https://www.fi.edu/laureates/eville-gorham
  11. ↑ Gorham, Eville (2012). "Two contrasting approaches to ecological research". Ecological Society of America Bulletin 93: 298–302. doi:10.1890/0012-9623-93.4.298.
  12. ↑ National Academy of Sciences (1995). "Presentation Ceremony". Proceedings of the 132nd Annual Meeting 123.
  13. ↑ Vitousek, Peter (2014). "Insightful, scholarly, and synthetic: Eville Gorham and the chemistry of surface waters". Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America 95: 226–228. doi:10.1890/0012-9623-95.3.226.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 http://pubs.lib.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=joie
  15. ↑ https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/49549/gorhamEville.pdf?sequence=1
  16. ↑ http://www.academia.edu/20503192/Carl_Olof_Tamm_A_Swedish_scholar
  17. ↑ http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/72/6/795.full.pdf
  18. ↑ http://purl.umn.edu/125728
  19. ↑ Hayes, Samuel (Feb 1, 1998). Explorations in Environmental History: Essays. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. p. 281. More than one of |pages= and |page= specified (help)

External links

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