Charles Frederick Wurster Jr. (August 1, 1930 – July 6, 2023) was an environmental activist, a professor of environmental science, and one of the founders of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). The EDF founders, non-lawyers except for Victor Yannacone, were scientists, environmentalists, and birders, but they were instrumental in the intiation of environmental law and legal action against the use of DDT.[1] [2]
A native Philadelphian, Wurster grew up in Olney, Philadelphia.[3] He began his lifelong involvement in birdwatching when he was a teenager in high school. After high school education at Germantown Friends School, he graduated in 1952 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Haverford College.[4] One summer during his youth, he worked in an Alaskan gold mine.[3] After earning a master's degree in organic chemistry from the University of Delaware in 1954, he graduated in 1957 with a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Stanford University.[4] His thesis advisor was Harry Stone Mosher.[5] For the academic year 1957–58, Wurster was a Fulbright Fellow in Innsbruck, Austria. Wurster was employed from 1959 to 1962 as a researcher by Monsanto and from 1962 to 1965 as a postdoctoral research at Dartmouth College.[4] At Stony Brook University (SBU), he became an assistant professor in 1965 and retired in 1994 as professor emeritus in SBU's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. In 2009, SBU awarded him an honorary degree.[6] He was a visiting professor in Australia, Norway, and South Korea.[3]
In 2015, Oxford University Press published Wurster's book about the DDT struggles during the 1960s and 1970s.[7] [8]