DURHAM, N.C. – Donald E. Worster, one of the world’s leading historians of environmentalism and the American West, will speak about “John Muir and the Modern Passion for Nature,” on Wednesday, Nov. 10, at 51.

The 4:30 p.m. lecture at the White Lecture Hall on 51’s East Campus is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

Worster is a professor of U.S. history and environmental studies at the University of Kansas. An accomplished historian and biographer, he most recently authored A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell, published by Oxford Press in 2001. His earlier works include Dust Bowl, for which he received the Bancroft Prize; and The Wealth of Nature and Rivers of Empire, both of which were nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in history.

Worster’s lecture is sponsored by the Forest History Society, and 51’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences and the Department of History as part of the Lynn W. Day Distinguished Lectureship in Forest and Conservation History.

Muir was a 19th century Scottish-born explorer, naturalist, conservationist and writer whose passionate and detailed chronicles of the great wildernesses of the American West helped give birth to modern environmentalism. A founder of the Sierra Club, he has been called the “Father of America’s National Parks.”

In his talk, Worster will examine Muir’s legacy on the conservation movement in the United States, and in particular the impact of his changing views on the natural world. Muir’s early passion for wildness and his egalitarian feelings toward other species were rooted in the rising democratic culture of the time, Worster will explain. However, as the frontier naturalist began moving in more affluent and influential circles in his later years, he became an advocate not of untouched wildness but of preservation, in the form of national parks.

For more information about the lecture, contact Steven Anderson at the Forest History Society at (919) 682-9319.