May 9, 2013
05/10/13 Noted limnologist and oceanographer Charles Goldman, Ph.D., a 1948 alumnus of Culver Military Academy, will present a public lecture on Thursday, May 16, at 7 p.m. in Roberts Auditorium, located in the Roberts Hall of Science on the campus of Culver Academies. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Goldman, whose return to campus coincides with his 65th class reunion, will speak on “The Impact of Climatic Change and Global Warming on Inland Waters of the World: What can be done now to Mitigate this Crisis.” The lecture is sponsored by the Academies’ Global Studies Institute, which challenges students to become knowledgeable and conscientious citizens of the world.
During his visit, Goldman also will meet with two of the Academies’ Advanced Placement science classes and attend a private lunch with members of the Lake Maxinkuckee Environmental Council.
Goldman recently retired from the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California-Davis, where he had been since 1958. He developed the first courses in limnology (the study of fresh waters) and oceanography at UC-Davis and was the founding director of the Institute of Ecology, serving from 1966-69 and again from 1990-92.
His most important and sustained contribution is the four decades of research on Lake Tahoe. Goldman is director of the Tahoe Research Group and has pursued long-term ecological research simultaneously at Lake Tahoe and Castle Lake, Calif., since 1958. He successfully combined effective research and social action with his pioneering studies of lake eutrophication (the dense growth of algae and other organisms, the decay of which depletes the shallow waters of oxygen in the summer).
Goldman’s many prestigious awards include a National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship in 1964 for limnological research in the Arctic (Lapland), a Guggenheim Fellowship in northern Italy in 1965, and having the “Goldman Glacier” in Antarctica named for him in 1967.
He was awarded the Vollenweider lectureship in Canada in 1989, the Chevron Conservation Award, and was named Culver’s Man of the Year in 1991.
He received degrees in geology and zoology from the University of Illinois before completing his doctorate in limnology and fisheries from the University of Michigan in 1958.