The Committee on the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Award for Environmental Quality nominates G. Evelyn Hutchinson. Effective management of the environment has to depend on an understanding of what it is. Professor Hutchinson has been quietly promoting a real understanding of how the world works for many years. We nominate him not for any specific action to improve the quality of the environment, but in recognition of a whole lifetime of fundamental studies in limnology and ecological theory that have helped us understand our environment and therefore have helped us in our efforts to keep it in viable condition. We recognize further his pervasive influence in focussing that understanding on the protection and preservation of the natural system of which we are part, and on the values of the special features of the human species.

Evelyn Hutchinson is well known for the immense breadth of his interests in science and beyond it. Tonight we emphasize how he has furthered the rational use of knowledge by lecturing, by writing, and by working with groups such as the Academy's Committee on Science and Public Policy. All of his writing has the characteristic of stimulating thought and work by others, but especially noteworthy is the remarkable series of essays known as Marginalia that appeared for many years in the American Scientist. In the first of these, over 30 years ago, he wrote,

> The writer believes that the most practical lasting benefit science can now offer is to teach man how to avoid destruction of his own environment, and how, by understanding himself with true humility and pride, to find ways to avoid injuries that at present he inflicts on himself with such devastating energy.(1)

In all his activities, Evelyn Hutchinson has exemplified this belief, and in so doing has greatly influenced the thought of three generations of scientists. Without his contributions, our concern for the environment would be notably less effective than it is today.

One year ago, Professor Hutchinson and I stood in opposite relationship at the presentation of the Cottrell Award, and he quoted Mathew Paris. For many others as well as for myself, I now respond:

> Tu se' lo mio maestro, e il mio autore;
> tu se' solo colui, da cui io tolsi
> lo bello stile, che m' ha fatto honore. (2)

W. T. Edmondson

22 April 1974

(1) American Scientist, 1943, Vol. 31, p. 270.

(2) Dante to Virgil, Inferno, Canto 1, lines 85-87.