John Todd

John Todd: 1939-

Dr. John Todd has been described as "a visionary biologist." An acknowledged leader in the field of ecological design, John Todd’s ideas have nearly always taken shape in applications that make pioneering or innovative use of one or often numerous forms of alternative technology; and much of his work (especially in New England and Scotland) has been devoted to food production or to waste processing. As an author, he has presented the outcome of the work that he and colleagues have undertaken in the requisite scientific papers and in a series of books.

Todd was born in Canada in 1939. He earned his B.Sc. (1961) in agriculture and his M.Sc. (1963) in parasitology and tropical medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, after which he did doctoral work in fisheries and oceanography at the University of Michigan. In 1969, after receiving his Ph.D., he joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, Mass., as an assistant scientist.

John Todd’s wife, Nancy Jack Todd, had trained as a dancer, and is a skilled writer and editor. She has edited and added introductions to many of John Todd’s books, and co-written the most recent. Back in the Woods Hole days, John had begun to develop his ideas about how complicated biological food chains worked, and in their conversations Nancy wondered if ecological concepts could serve people's needs. She suggested science needed "a human face."

In 1969 John and Nancy Todd co-founded the New Alchemy Institute to do cutting-edge research into aspects of biology (and related sciences) along with the practical application of this science to technologies. Todd and colleagues have designed miniature ecosystems, largely self-perpetuating, which bring ecological principles into service of human requirements.

Todd served as NAI’s President until 1981. In 1980, he co-founded Ocean Arks International. He also co-founded Living Technologies Inc., an ecological design, engineering, and construction firm in Burlington, Vermont. From 1999 he has been Research Professor & Distinguished Lecturer, The University of Vermont.

While John Todd has pursued much of his work with the developing world in mind, applications for the benefit of industrialized and affluent societies have been part and parcel.

Among the awards Dr. Todd has received have been, in 1994, the Daimler/Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design, in 1996, the Environmental Merit Award (from the US Environmental Protection Agency), in 1998, the Bioneers Lifetime Achievement Award; also in 1998, he and Nancy Jack Todd together received the Lindbergh Award in recognition of their work in technology and the environment. John Todd was profiled in Inventing Modern America, published by the Lemelson-MIT Program for Invention and Innovation, in which story of the development of his innovative ecological waste treatment systems is highlighted.

Books

authored or co-authored by John Todd:

The Village as Solar Ecology (1980)

Tomorrow is Our Permanent Address (1980)

Reinhabiting Cities & Towns: Designing for Sustainability (1981)

Bioshelters, Ocean Arks, City Farming: Ecology as the Basis of Design (1984)

From Eco-cities to Living Machines (1994).

References:

John Todd c.v.: http://www.uvm.edu/giee/cvs/Toddvita.htm

John Todd biographical article, "Heroes for the Planet" series. Web: http://www.time.com

John Todd bio sketch Web: http://www.schumachersociety.org