George P. (George Perkins) Marsh

Born in Woodstock, Vermont, in 1801, George Perkins Marsh built an unusually wide-ranging life as a lawyer, congressman, diplomat, and scholar. He studied at Dartmouth, practiced law in Vermont, served in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1840s, and later represented the United States abroad in the Ottoman Empire and in Italy.

He is remembered most for Man and Nature (1864), a book that argued human beings could damage forests, soils, and waterways on a large scale. Because of that work, he is often described as an early conservation thinker, and many later writers have seen him as an important forerunner of modern environmental thought.

Marsh was also known for his deep interest in languages and history, which gave his writing a broad, learned feel without losing its practical purpose. He died in Italy in 1882, but his ideas about the long-term effects of human activity on the environment have continued to resonate far beyond his own century.