Gene E. Likens Oral History Transcript

Gene Likens is an American ecologist and limnologist. He begins describing his early background years where he grew up in the Midwest on a farm in Indiana in humble beginnings. He was connected to the outside world through lakes, forests, and places he liked to spend time in. As an undergraduate, he went to a small liberal arts school called Manchester College in Indiana. He initially contemplated a career in sports but heeded the call to science as the result of an insistent professor. Gene went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he completed both his master’s and Ph.D. degrees. In 1963, he was hired as an instructor at Dartmouth College, and he later moved to continue teaching at Cornell University in 1969. While at Dartmouth, he traveled to and from Hubbard Brook in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It is here that he, along with three others conducted a long-term ecological research study looking at forests as ecosystems and analyzing the chemistry of stream water. This became known as the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study with the co-discovery of acid rain. Gene’s early work has influenced government policy and included giving testimony to Congress along with other colleagues describing what acid rain was and the actions that they thought should be done about it. This briefing was instrumental in the signing into law of the Clean Air Act Amendments in 1990.