R. Stephen Berry discusses new book on thermodynamics and need for scientific literacy

When R. Stephen Berry joined the University of Chicago faculty in 1964, he was not prepared for the city’s pollution.

“I was quite angry,” recalled Berry, the James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Chemistry. “Chicago was smoky and smelly, and there’d be a layer of gray dirt on your windshield each morning.”

Berry fired off a letter to the mayor and local alderman voicing his concerns, and was soon invited to tour the city’s air pollution facilities. That visit helped inspire his environmental activism and a pioneering scholarly career that began with a landmark idea called the “life-cycle analysis”—the tally of a product’s environmental impact through all stages, from its production to its disposal.

Read the full Q&A with Professor Berry via UChicago News.