George P. Marsh

George Perkins Marsh (1801–1882) was an American lawyer, diplomat, philologist and pioneer of environmental thought. Born in Woodstock, Vermont, he served in Congress, then as minister to the Ottoman Empire, and from 1861 until his death as the first United States minister to the Kingdom of Italy. A gifted linguist, he lectured and wrote on the English language. His observations of eroded and deforested lands around the Mediterranean led to Man and Nature (1864), which showed how human action degrades the earth and argued for restoring it. The book is regarded as a founding text of the conservation movement. Marsh died at Vallombrosa, near Florence.