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Looking for Oral History Interview of Ruth Patrick, limnologist



I am forwarding this query to the list in the hopes that someone may be able to more definitively answer it. Thanks!

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John Mauer and I have a contract (actually a participating agreement) with 
the U.S. Forest Service office that manages the land at the Savannah River 
Site to write the 50th anniversary history of that Forest Service office 
and do oral histories.   We have been able to arrange to interview Ruth 
Patrick, and are trying to find out whether anyone has ever done systematic 
oral history with her.

Ruth Patrick is a limnologist, specializing in the one-celled organisms 
that live in rivers.  One person we interviewed told us the story that 
during World War II the Navy took samples of the hull of a German sub that 
had sunk and asked Dr. Patrick to tell them where it had been by the 
organisms growing on the hull.  She did baseline environmental studies for 
DuPont before they put in new factories even before they contracted with 
her to do one for the Savannah River Plant in early 1951.  She became the 
first woman on the DuPont board of directors and she served for many years 
on the Environmental Advisory Committee for the Savannah River Site.  One 
brief history piece about her is at: 
http://heritage.dupont.com/floater/fl_patrick/floater.shtml   Dr. Patrick 
is 95 years old and still goes to her office at the Philadelphia Academy of 
Natural Sciences most days.

She isn't a physicist, so she isn't an obvious person for you to collect an 
interview of, though she is clearly of significance to the history of 
environmental issues at nuclear weapons productions facilities.  I've 
checked the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry list and they 
haven't interviewed her either.  I don't know what oral history collections 
there are in the biological sciences--can you suggest any organizations 
that I could contact that might have interviewed her?

Pam



Pamela E. Mack                     tel: 864-656-5356
Dept. of History                       fax: 864-656-1015
Clemson University                  email: Pammack@clemson.edu 
Clemson SC 29634-0527          http://people.clemson.edu/~pammack/ 

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