February 17, 1972

Microbiologist, experimental pathologist and pioneer environmentalist René Dubos lectured on “From Industrial Society to Humane Environment.” Recognizing much contemporary environmental commentary about a “gloomy sunset for the human race,” the man often credited with coining the admonition to “think globally and act locally” found reasons, according to The Miscellany News, for a more hopeful future in both the astounding new evidences of “the resiliency of nature” and a growing awareness that “the problems of matching man’s civilization to the earth’s ecology are conquerable in the ‘myth of growth’ is exploded.”

Dr. Dubos’s So Human an Animal: How We Are Shaped by Surroundings and Events (1968) won the Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction in 1969. He also spoke at Vassar in March 1951, April 1953, October and December 1956, February 1959 and April 1968.