Eville Gorham (October 15, 1925 — January 14, 2020) was a Canadian-American scientist whose focus has been understanding the chemistry of fresh waters and the ecology and biogeochemistry of peatlands. In the process, Gorham made a number of practical contributions that included discovering the influence of acid rain in lake acidification, plus the importance of the biological magnification of radioactive fallout isotopes in northern food chains. The former led to legislation and redesign of the power plants of the world to scrub sulfur, and the latter was an early step toward the establishment of an atmospheric nuclear test ban treaty.
Gorham emphasized that discovery in science is often the result of chance and serendipity, and encouraged students to watch for the opportunities that chance provides. He was recognized by the National Academy of Sciences as a renaissance scholar and has influenced the careers of others.
Life and career
Eville Gorham grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, an avid reader drawn to the classroom. His life and career are outlined in a 2015 essay. He attended Dalhousie University from 1942 to 1947, receiving a BSc degree in biology and an MSc degree in zoology. His thesis showed the effects of temperature difference in the development of salmon embryos, of later significance for studies of thermal pollution.
At this point, Gorham decided to avoid experimentation that involved harming animals. In 1947, he received an Overseas Science Research Scholarship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and was accepted as a doctoral student of plant ecology at University College, London.
Gorham began his doctoral work studying mineral content of plants in the Lake District and became interested in the acidification of ecosystems. After his PhD, he spent a postdoctoral year in Sweden conducting a project on the waters of a Swedish peatland. After returning to England, he worked first as a Lecturer in Botany at University College, London and later for the Freshwater Biological Association in the English Lake District. It was here that he made some of his most significant discoveries regarding acid rain and nuclear fallout.
Gorham credits his discoveries in radioactive fallout to the milkshakes at a drugstore in Halifax. He became fond of the proprietor’s bloodhound, and, in a point of serendipity, his later search for his own bloodhound led to an opportunity to research radioactivity. It led him to the local medical officer, Frank Madge, who had a bloodhound. Madge became concerned about implications for the surrounding population after a fire at the Windscale plutonium plant in the Lake District, and asked Gorham to assist in his investigation. Gorham eventually agreed to use his lab’s Geiger counter to investigate radiation around the plant. He discovered major radiation in sphagnum moss gathered from near the Windscale site, but equivalent radiation in sphagnum gathered far from the site. This suggested that the radiation was not the result of the Windscale fire, but rather was global radioactive fallout. Gorham wrote a paper about his findings and sent it to Nature for review. It was published as the lead article.
Gorham continued to test radioactivity in plants and discovered that lichens were also highly radioactive. He chanced to read a brief paragraph in a report from the Norwegian Defense Reserve Establishment, which noted that Norway reindeer, which eat lichen, were unusually rich in radioactive elements. Gorham then published an article that indicated the extreme bioaccumulation of radioactive fallout in northern ecosystems. This information laid the groundwork for Barry Commoner, leader of the St. Louis Committee for Nuclear Information, to suggest that, because reindeer picked up radioactivity from lichen, their primary food source, that radioactivity could be passed along and concentrated further in the Inuit and Laplander people who ate those reindeer. In mid-twentieth century, the idea that human actions could permeate the entire globe, including people remote from the initial problem, helped encourage the Atmospheric Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, which prohibited nuclear testing in the atmosphere.