Gene Likens
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Gene Likens is an American ecologist and a leading pioneer in the study of acid rain.
Likens obtained his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1962, and joined Dartmouth College and the research group at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire, where he was co-founder of a group with Professor Herbert Bormann working on the "Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study". The study immediately found that the rain was abnormally acidic, and the group made one of the first scientific studies linking acid rain to air pollution such as Sulphur Dioxide. The group also devised a range of highly influential long-term experiments on the ecosystem scale.
Likens was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1981. In 1983 he founded the Institute of Ecosystem Studies (IES) in Millbrook, New York as part of the New York Botanical Garden. The IES became independent in 1993 with Likens as director and president. In 2006 Likens announced he would step down as director of the IES and return to full-time research.
Likens was also elected as foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1988, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1994 and the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2000.
