Gifford Pinchot – 1865-1946

Pinchot was an American naturalist trained in France, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria in forestry techniques. His work at Biltmore, the North Carolina estate of George W. Vanderbilt, in the 1890s was the first application of scientific forestry in the United States. In 1898, Pinchot was named the first chief of the federal agency that became the U.S. Forest Service. Under Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and William Howard Taft, Pinchot instituted scientific forest development and conservation. He was one of the nation’s major environmental scientists.