Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Dr. Gene E. Likens recently added another honor to his long list of accomplishments.
The 1953 Sidney High School graduate and director of the Institute for Ecosystem Studies had a laboratory facility named after him during a Nov. 3 dedication.
IES is in Millbrook, N.Y., and was founded by Likens in 1983 at the Mary Flagler Cary Arboretum.
IES is one of the world's leading ecological research centers and Likens is one of the most respected ecologists in the world.
Credited with the discovery of acid rain in North America, he is involved in multidisciplinary ecological studies of forest, stream and lake ecosystems in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
The Gene E. Likens Laboratory houses state-of-the-art analytical and technical labs, continuing the work for which the institute is famous: studying ecological relationships that help determine the quality of the environment.
Likens is the son of Josephine Likens, rural Pierceton, who attended the dedication in a surprise visit, and the late Col. Likens.
The famous scientist credits his parents with giving him "a wonderful upbringing through superb parenting."
"I was a Depression baby," he said. "We lived in an honest-to-goodness log cabin and were very poor, but didn't know it. I had two wonderful parents."
Col. Likens was a Sidney teacher, overseeing the education of fifth- and sixth-graders, and a farmer. Josephine was a homemaker.
Gene Likens' interest in ecology, he said, clearly began from working on the farm, being outdoors, fishing in the lakes and walking around in the fields and forests outside Sidney.
"Ecology has changed dramatically from a field that was largely focused on natural history of organisms and systems to a much more quantitative study where we try to get precise answers to questions."
He is one of the pioneers of a science that has become more mature and more sophisticated.
After graduating from Sidney High School he went on to Manchester College, earning a bachelor of science degree in 1957, a master's degree in 1959 from the University of Wisconsin -Madison and earned his Ph.D. from the same university in 1962.
After teaching at Dartmouth College from 1963 to 1969, he became an associate professor at Cornell University in 1969 until 1972 and a full professor from 1972 to 1983.
In January 1983 he was named Cornell University's Charles A. Alexander Professor of Biological Sciences. He has eight honorary doctoral degrees for his contributions to ecological science.
He holds faculty positions at Yale, Cornell and Rutgers universities; is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and has a honorary membership in The British Ecological Society; and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and so the list goes.
Likens describes his role as a scientist as one who provides information for the public and decision-makers to help them make decisions wisely and properly.
"One has to maintain an optimism, an enormous optimism, because there are enormous environmental problems in North America and in the world," he said.
"We are an intelligent species, we have the ability to figure out the right and appropriate answers to our problems."
Likens has nothing but praise for the facility. Situated on 2,000 acres, the IES has 40 buildings with 30 Ph.D. ecologists and 180 employees. It is one of the largest ecological centers in the world.
"Being the largest is not my goal," Likens said. "Being the best is, and we have developed into a first-rate organization that I'm exceedingly proud of."
Likens is well-acquainted with the discovery of the PCBs in the Hudson River by General Electric. The institute is 15 miles from the waterway, and, although IES is not involved with the proceedings there, the Hudson can be seen from IES.
The disaster "is a big issue here and a complicated one," he said. "PCBs were released in the river for a very long time. The question is whether or not to dredge the sediment. It's become a very large ($800 billion) emotional and political issue."
Likens is credited with discovering acid rain. It, too, was a very large emotional issue.
Likes continues his decades-old work in the White Mountains, where, in the early 1960s, he found the chemistry of rain and snow was quite acid, from 10 to 100 times more acidic than rain falling out of the sky should have been.
He published his first paper on acid rain in 1972.
"The idea that rain could be polluted really captured the attention of people, and like the PCB issue, started people looking at where it came from," he said.
Where it came from was the combustion of coal and oil generated by electrical utilities. Then the situation became much more politically and emotionally charged. It took big bucks to control it and big bucks to clean it up, a process that continues.
Likens is still an active scientist and regularly publishes the results of his work. Recently in the White Mountains an entire watershed was treated with a calcium-rich mineral to see if it will reduce the effects of acid rain.
"We won't know the results for 50 years," said the 60-something scientist.
A world traveler and lecturer, Likens also has authored several books with titles like "The Ecological Basis of Conservation: Heterogeneity, Ecosystems and Biodiversity" and "Integrated Regional Models: Interactions Between Humans and Their Environment."
One geared for everyday folks is "The Ecosystem Approach: Its Use and Abuse," published in 1989.
"I want to do science so I can explain it to my mother," he said. "I talk to many reporters because they explain things to the public. We're partly funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. I felt a moral obligation to pay back the public."
IES deals with problems that are basic and important: air pollution and its effect on drinking water, the invasion of zebra mussels in major waterways and lyme disease, just to name a few areas of study.
"We work with the Centers for Disease Control and so much of what we do involves humans. We don't try to keep humans out of our ecosystems, we study their effects directly on their environment."
Likens and his wife, Phyllis, live near the Institute. Their three children are grown and have developed successful careers of their own.
He likes living in New York and rarely returns to Indiana.
"It's a lovely place to live, with rolling hills. If you want to go to the big city you can. It still takes 20 minutes to get to the grocery store," he said.
