George M. Woodwell
American ecologist (1928–2024)
George Masters Woodwell (October 23, 1928 – June 18, 2024) was an American ecologist. He founded several programs in ecology, first at Brookhaven National Laboratory then at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and then at the Woods Hole Research Center, now known as Woodwell Climate Research Center, which he founded in 1985.
Woodwell is best known for his work on the effects of ionizing radiation on forest ecosystems, his work to have the pesticide DDT banned from use in the United States, and his work to call attention to the threat of climate change as a result of combustion of fossil fuels. Woodwell was one of the first scientists to sound the alarm about climate change, testifying before Congress about climate change impacts in 1986.
Woodwell was a founding board member of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Early life and education
Woodwell was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to parents who were educators: Philip McIntire Woodwell and Virginia Sellers. He spent his childhood summers on his family's 140-acre farm in York, Maine. He attended the Boston Latin School. He received a bachelor's degree in biology in 1950 from Dartmouth College. He served as a Lt.
“George M. Woodwell” enters the record as american ecologist (1928–2024). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what George, Woodwell and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5541995. VIAF identifies the subject as 69010286. The Library of Congress control number is n82048715. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2024, 1985 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “George M. Woodwell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.