Dr. Richard H. Goodwin 1910-2007

 

This page is dedicated to the memory of Richard H. "Dick" Goodwin, Katharine Blunt Professor Emeritus of Botany, Director of the Connecticut College Arboretum, and nationally acclaimed land preservationist. Goodwin helped establish The Nature Conservancy, an international group that now protects more than 98-million acres worldwide. He and his wife Esther donated land--and persuaded neighbors to do the same--to establish Connecticut's Burnham Brook Preserve, a 1,200-acre preserve used mainly for scientific research. As a result of Director Goodwin's efforts the Connecticut College Arboretum grew from 90 acres to 450, pieced together by 22 separate tracts. Dick served as professor of botany and chair of the botany department at Connecticut College from 1944-1976. In 1969, he helped the college create one of the nation's first environmental studies programs. For more information about Dick Goodwin and his remarkable life, click on one of the links below.

“What I have done in this life has not been motivated by an effort to save myself from unpleasant experiences in the next, but rather, at least in part, by a desire to preserve the beauty and biological integrity of the earth we have inherited.” Goodwin, R. H. (2002). A Botanist's Window on the Twentieth Century. Petersham, Massachusetts: Harvard Forest, p. 303.

Professor Goodwin with students in the greenhouse at New London Hall. Photo taken in 1950.

 

Dick Goodwin's concern for the environment was woven through his life. He wrote in a poem dedicated to his wife: For Esther Would'st come with me down through the fields and sun-lit glades into the forest dim? The breath of evening cools the brow, though high the noon. The turgid stream glinting fills each trout pool to the brim And rushes on, just as the precious hours that pass too soon. This wonderful place of ours made mad by man, Whose thundering jets draw lines across cloudless skies, Where rivers hide in foam and atoms split by plan, And pesticides pose threats to every living bug and bird that flies. This world of ours has need of those who deeply care. There's work for us to do this very day. And joy attends this enterprise we share Together. The apple has been plucked. We may not stay.