Pen and Paper Revolutionaries: Down and Dirty in Chernobyl

While some professors are enacting change in an abstract, cerebral sense, at least one Harvard academic is getting his hands dirty in the real world. Mallinckrodt Research Professor of Physics Richard Wilson is applying his research in the field of radiating and ionizing particles to the environmental problems of disaster-ridden countries such as Bangladesh and Chernobyl.

Since his first visit in February 1987, the year after the famous nuclear accident, Wilson has made a dozen trips to Chernobyl. He examined the affects of the radiation crisis first-hand and was appalled at the inaccuracies that were being published. “The [radiation] levels reported in the American media made no sense,” he says. “It’s incredible what non-technical people will believe.” Using Russian reports, Wilson was able to determine the true extent of the crisis. In 1988, he made a documentary, Back to Chernobyl, which aired on public television.

Wilson has continued to work with needy countries. Currently, his focus is the arsenic contamination crisis in Bangladesh. According to Wilson, Bangladeshi wells are contaminated, the government is paralyzed by its own problem and international calls for help have gone unanswered for seven years. “I decided to work independently, with a small group with a small amount of money and demonstrate what could be done,” Wilson says. “It’s been the worst man-made environmental disaster in the world, probably 50 to 100 times more disastrous than Chernobyl.”

Wilson has personally contributed $10,000 to the Bangladeshi sanitation effort, and he has also helped on-the-ground rehabilitation programs. He is modest about what he has accomplished. “You just have to organize it,” Wilson says, “you think it’s going to be hard until you actually just do it.”

Wilson’s environmental concerns are not all overseas. “One of the biggest issues I’ve noticed at Harvard is the waste of electrical energy needlessly,” Wilson says. At his request, the windows of the Jefferson/Lyman science building at Harvard were changed to double-paned in order to be more energy resourceful, and many other buildings soon followed suit.

Though he retired from teaching a few years ago, Wilson still teaches a freshman seminar called “Quantitative Methods in Public Policy Decisions.”

History Professor John Womack said Wilson maintains an influence among the Harvard faculty. “He’s not afraid to say anything,” Womack says, “and that makes him very valuable if trying to find truth and honest opinion about something.” To change the tenor of academic debate is one thing; Wilson is using theory to improve the quality of people’s lives.