Marston Bates, Visionary Environmentalist

Marston Bates (1906-1974) raised questions concerning man's relationship to nature, questions that are of much greater importance today than they were during his lifetime. He began his career with the Rockefeller Foundation as a mosquito expert, and by 1955 he had established himself as one of the key players in the field of human ecology through a series of publications that brought together in a clear and readable style the complexities involved in understanding human ecology. This article traces Bates's development and discusses how the Foundation failed to engage the subject of human ecology, even at a time when it recognized its critical importance to humankind.