Fumio Matsumura, PhD, was known
internationally as a “grand master of
insect toxicology.” His pioneering work
shaped the felds of pesticide and environmental toxicology. Some of his major
contributions were the mechanisms of
action of tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin
(TCDD), the endocrine disruptive activities of DDT analogues, and many other
topics. He was a distinguished professor of environmental toxicology and entomology at UC, Davis. Before that, he
was a professor at the University of Wisconsin.
Thomas A. Cahill was a professor
of physics, at UC, Davis. He is well
known for his air quality research in
such diverse situations as Mono Lake
dust, wildfres, winter haze layers
in the Grand Canyon, volcanic eruptions, oil rig fres, and emissions associated with the World Trade Center
terrorist-instigated collapse and subsequent burning. He was one of the founding members of the IMPROVE air
quality network, which was one of the frst air quality networks; It is still
operating today. Thomas also served as the Director of the UC Ecology Center.
He was consulted on environmental safety and health issues worldwide.
Lincoln Brower, PhD, was an expert
in chemical ecology and monarch butterfies. He studied monarch butterfy
migration and sequestration of cardiac
glycosides from milkweeds for defense
against predators. In the photo, Lincoln
Brower and Carolyn Nelson, research
associate at UC, Davis, are in the Sierra
foothills, bagging milkweed plants to
study the uptake of cardiac glycosides
in adult monarchs reared as larvae on
these plants. He earned a BA in biology at Princeton University and a PhD at
Yale University. He was a professor at Amherst College (Massachusetts) and
then at the University of Florida. He published widely in journals such as
Science, Nature, and Scientifc American.