Environment: Paul Revere of Ecology

BARRY COMMONER is a professor with a class of millions—most of them real students, all of them deeply concerned about man's war against nature. At 52, the impatient microbiologist from Washington University in St. Louis has become the uncommon spokesman for the common man. He personifies the New Scientist—concerned, authoritative and worldly, an iconoclast who refuses to remain sheltered in the ivory laboratory. Air Pollution Expert Lewis Green calls Commoner a "Paul Revere waking the country to environmental dangers." Commoner's students agree.

In the past year, he has given 32 major speeches, written 14 articles, and traveled to numerous U.S. campuses, where...