Saving Our Planet

Peter Matthiessen is a two-time National Book Award-winning American novelist and nonfiction writer as well as an environmental activist. He frequently focuses on American Indian issues and history, as in his detailed study of the Leonard Peltier case, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. In November 2008, at age 81, he received his second National Book Award for Shadow Country, an 890-page revision of a trilogy of novels he released in the 1990s. His first National Book Award was won in 1980 for The Snow Leopard. His story Travelin' Man was adapted into the film The Young One by Luis Bunuel.

Like many young readers before him, Robert Ballard dreamed of becoming an undersea explorer after reading of Jules Verne's 20,0000 Leagues Under the Sea. Unlike most of Verne's readers, Ballard went on to realize his dream.

For more than ten years, Ballard spent four months of every year at sea, and much of that time miles of feet below the water's surface, exploring the uncharted mountain ranges of the ocean floor. While his discoveries of undersea volcanoes and chemosynthetic life in the hydrothermal vents off the Galapagos islands have earned him a place in the history of science, his expeditions to discover the wrecks of such famous lost ships as the Titanic, the Lusitania and the Bismarck also earned him a place in the headlines.

His discoveries, and the amazing vehicles he has built to perform his explorations, are even more remarkable than the fanciful adventures of Jules Verne's Captain Nemo.

Ballard addressed the student delegates and answered their questions at the 1990 Achievement Summit in Chicago.

Edward O. Wilson's childhood fascination with insects and other living things matured into an intellectual passion that fired one of the greatest careers in modern science. Wilson made his first major entomological discovery at age 13. By the time he completed graduate school he was already winning recognition as the world's foremost authority on ants. From his base at Harvard University, he traveled the world, collecting rare specimens and gaining unprecedented insight into the evolution and behavior of these complex creatures.

Wilson pioneered the study of chemical communication among animals and devised the theory of island biogeography that informs conservation practice to this day. His landmark studies of the social insects became a cornerstone of the modern science of sociobiology, the systematic study of the biological basis of social behavior. In his 1975 book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Wilson applied this discipline to the behavior of all species. His observations on the biological origins of human nature and society stirred a maelstrom of debate. Wilson endured bitter personal attacks from critics, many of whom grossly misinterpreted his work, but within a few years, his ideas had won widespread acceptance throughout the scientific community.

A graceful and lucid writer, Wilson holds the distinction -- especially rare for a scientist -- of winning two Pulitzer Prizes, awarded for On Human Nature and the comprehensive work, The Ants. Over the course of his career, Wilson has written over 20 books and discovered hundreds of new species. His idea have had an immeasurable influence on our understanding of life, nature and society. He remains an outspoken advocate for conservation and biodiversity, fighting to preserve the wondrous variety of the natural world.

George Schaller is a senior conservationist at the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Bronx, New York. He is a legendary zoologist, naturalist, conservationist, and best-selling author, who is recognized as the world's pre-eminent field biologist, studying wildlife throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Schaller has spent years in the most remote and forbidding places on earth studying the natural history of endangered animals fighting for their survival. He has encountered tigers in the wilds of India, mountain gorillas and lions in Africa, jaguars in the swamps of Brazil, and snow leopards in the Himalayas. His splendid writings are presented with style and stunning imagery, including "The Serengeti Lion" (which received the National Book Award) and "The Mountain Gorilla" (the first book that conveyed to the general public the profound intelligence and gentleness of gorillas in the wild). Schaller has helped establish more than 20 parks or animal reserves around the world, including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Chang Tang Nature Reserve. He is the recipient of the National Geographic Society's Lifetime Achievement Award and the World Wildlife Fund's Gold Medal.

James Van Allen (1914 - 2006) was a pathbreaking astrophysicist best known for his work in the development of research satellite technology and the discovery of the bands of radiation that circle the Earth. Born in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, he graduated from Iowa Wesleyan College and received his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from the University of Iowa in 1939. He began his professional career with the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. After U.S. entry into World War II, he joined the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University where he helped develop rugged vacuum tubes and proximity fuses for the armed forces. In 1942, he joined the Navy, serving in the South Pacific , where he completed the development of the proximity fuse. After the war, he returned to Johns Hopkins University, experimenting with V-2 rockets captured from the Germans. When the Soviets launched the first manmade satellite, Sputnik, the U.S. accelerated its own space program. Van Allen's Explorer spacecraft was selected for deployment by the newly formed NASA. In 1958, Explorer 1 returned unprecedented data about fields of radiation circling the Earth. The discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belt, as it came to be called in the press, made James Van Allen into a national figure, the public face of American astrophysics. In the decades that followed, Van Allen continued his involvement in the space program, participating in the first four Explorer probes, the Pioneer and Mariner missions, and the orbiting geophysical observatory. He headed the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa from 1951 until his retirement in 1985. This podcast was recorded during the Academy of Achievement's 1988 Summit in Nashville, Tennessee.

Roger Revelle (March 7, 1909 - July 15, 1991) was one of the first scientists to predict and study global warming and the movement of Earth's tectonic plates, and was also instrumental in the formation of the University of California, San Diego. One of the world's most articulate spokesmen for science, he made his first mark in oceanography as a scientist, explorer and an administrator. The son of two schoolteachers in Seattle, he attended Pomona College and under the influence of charismatic professor Alfred Woodward, became interested in geology. In 1936, he earned his doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, and soon was on a path of leadership in international scientific affairs. One of his first major accomplishments was his proposal that the continuing addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere could lead to global warming. In a seminal paper in 1957, Dr. Revelle argued that the world's citizenry was performing "a great geophysical experiment" and called on the scientific community to monitor changes in the carbon dioxide content of the waters and the air. He later argued that the developing nations of the world were demanding special treatment on the limitations on the combustion of fossil fuels and that the carbon dioxide problem had become a "global economic experiment." In the 1950s, he was the intellectual architect for the creation of a University of California campus at La Jolla which involved the establishment of "a modern-day Athens where scholars would have a golden environment in which to think and create" with a heavy concentration on graduate education. Professor Revelle played a key role in the founding, in 1970, of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment of the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU). In 1986, he underscored the committee's initiatives to "understand the interaction of the great global physical, chemical, and biological systems regulating Earth's favorable environment for life, and the influence of human activity on that environment." From 1964 to 1974, Dr. Revelle was the Director of the Center for Population Studies at Harvard University. In 1976, he returned to UC San Diego as a professor of science and public policy. In 1991, Dr. Revelle received the National Medal of Science from President George H.W. Bush as one of the twentieth century's most eminent scientists. Roger Revelle addressed the student delegates at the 1985 Achievement Summit in Denver, Colorado and spoke about his lifetime as a scientist, educator, and environmentalist.