Leopold, Aldo

Leopold, Aldo (1887–1948), conservationist. Born in Iowa, Leopold began his professional career with the U.S. Forest Service. In 1933 he published a landmark conservation textbook, and the same year the University of Wisconsin created a chair of game management for him. He was a co‐founder of the Wilderness Society in 1935. His articles in various periodicals were gathered and published posthumously as A Sand County Almanac (1949), an influential book with a theme of “land ethic” that has sold over a million copies. Leopold was posthumously awarded the John Burroughs Medal for his life's work in 1978. He died fighting a grass fire on a neighbor's farm shortly after becoming adviser on conservation to the U.N. The Wisconsin State Journal wrote, “His shadow has come to be the conscience of the monster ambition to make a great pinball machine of the world.”