American biologist, college professor, and politician Barry Commoner has died at the age of 95, according to an obit filed by the New York Times. Commoner, a AAAS fellow, helped initiate the modern environmental movement.
In the early 1950s, Commoner—then a professor at Washington University in St. Louis—became concerned about radioactive fallout spreading from nuclear-weapons tests in the Nevada desert. His work on the global effects of radioactive fallout "contributed materially to the adoption of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963," reports NYT.com. Commoner also studied issues such as pollution and ozone-layer depletion and advocated the use of solar and other types of renewable energy. In 1970, a Time magazine cover story dubbed him "the Paul Revere of Ecology" for his early leadership in the field. Commoner was also a AAAS Board member from 1967 to 1974.
To learn more about the life of Commoner, read the New York Times story here.