Kiss the ground (and make a wish): soil science and hollywood

Abstract

When I was a young professor at Berkeley, my colleagues and I would frequently run into Jean Jenny, the wife of Hans Jenny, at various events on campus. Jean, a formidable force of nature with a deep interest in the future of soil science (and in the 1980's, its state of languishing in the backwaters of popular science), would frequently walk directly up to me and say, literally pointing her finger at me, ''you guys need to make soil sexy!!''. I would laugh, but I pondered the issue many times. As a young and then minor participant in the field, it seemed well beyond my ability, or even vision, that soil science would somehow be the stuff of popular appeal.

Topics & Concepts