Raymond Dasmann

Raymond Frederic Dasmann (born 1919), whose research and writings about threats to the natural world helped mold the modern environmental movement, was a UC Berkeley-trained field biologist who began talking about the need for environmental conservation in the late 1950s, almost two decades before the concept took hold in the American mainstream.

Although not a household name like Rachel Carson or Jacques Cousteau, he is considered a luminary of environmentalism whose intellectual contributions include the concept of "eco-development," or sustainable development, the idea that a community's progress should not rely on exploitation of its natural resources.