April 7, 1939

Dr. Erich W. Zimmermann, Kenan Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina, gave the first of four lectures on the American landscape and the environment, funded by an anonymous donor and intended to focus students’ attention on America’s natural heritage and to encourage their interest in conservation. The other speakers, later in the spring, were Dr. Douglas Johnson, geology department chairman at Columbia, Dr. Ira N. Gabrielson, chief of the biological survey bureau of the Department of Agriculture, and Dr. William Crocker, director of the Boyce Thompson Institute of Plant Research, a privately endowed research facility in Yonkers.