Toby Hemenway (April 23, 1952 – December 20, 2016)
was an American author and educator who wrote extensively on
permaculture
Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking. It applies these principle ...
and
ecological
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
issues. He was the author of ''Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture'' and ''The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience''. He served as an adjunct professor at
Portland State University
Portland State University (PSU) is a public research university in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in 1946 as a post-secondary educational institution for World War II veterans. It evolved into a four-year college over the following two decad ...
, Scholar-in-Residence at
Pacific University
Pacific University is a private university in Forest Grove, Oregon. Founded in 1849 as the Tualatin Academy, the original Forest Grove campus is west of Portland. The university maintains three other campuses in Eugene, Hillsboro, and Wo ...
, and field director at the Permaculture Institute (USA).
Career
After obtaining a degree in biology from
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
, Hemenway worked for many years as a researcher in genetics and immunology, first in academic laboratories including
Harvard and the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...
in Seattle, and then at
Immunex
Amgen Inc. (formerly Applied Molecular Genetics Inc.) is an American multinational biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California. One of the world's largest independent biotechnology companies, Amgen was established in T ...
, a major medical biotech company.
At about the time he was growing dissatisfied with the direction biotechnology was taking, he discovered permaculture. A career change followed, and Hemenway and his wife, Kiel, spent ten years creating a rural permaculture site in
southern Oregon
Southern Oregon is a region of the U.S. state of Oregon south of Lane County and generally west of the Cascade Range, excluding the southern Oregon Coast. Counties include Douglas, Jackson
Jackson may refer to:
People and fictional charac ...
. He was the editor of ''Permaculture Activist'', a journal of ecological design and sustainable culture, from 1999 to 2004. He moved to
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the list of cities in Oregon, largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette River, Willamette and Columbia River, Columbia rivers, Portland is ...
in 2004, and after six years of developing urban sustainability resources there, Hemenway and his wife divided their time between
Sebastopol, California and
western Montana
Western Montana is the western region of the U.S. state of Montana. The most restrictive definition limits western Montana only to the parts of the state west of the Continental Divide. Other common definitions add in the mountainous areas east ...
.
Hemenway died of pancreatic cancer on December 20, 2016.
Publications
* ''Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture'' (2001, ),
* ''The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience'' (2015, ),
Lectures
How Permaculture can Save Humanity and the Planet - but not CivilizationRedesigning Civilization with Permaculture
References
External links
Official website''Gaia's Garden'' book page''The Permaculture City'' book page*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hemenway, Toby
1952 births
2016 deaths
American non-fiction environmental writers
Newsletter publishers (people)
Pacific University faculty
Portland State University faculty
Permaculturalists
Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences alumni