Barry Commoner was an outstanding American biologist and one of the first activists of modern environmentalism. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish immigrants from Russia. A love of learning characterized Commoner's early life, and he went to Columbia University, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science in Zoology in 1937. He continued his education, and by 1941, he had earned a master's degree and doctorate in cellular biology from Harvard University when the United States was on the brink of entering the Second World War.

Commoner was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during the war, and the experience taught him about the world's resource management problems and environmental effects that would define his future work.

Following the war, Commoner took up an appointment as a professor of plant physiology at Washington University in St. Louis, where he held the position for over thirty years. His education was also active in parallel with the fighting. He started the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems in 1966, where the relationships between organisms and their ecosystems were established.

He was not restricted to teaching and research; he protested against the effects of nuclear explosions for testing in the 1950s and 60s. His research, including the well-known "Baby Tooth Survey," proved the direct connection between nuclear fallout and the presence of radioactive Strontium-90 in children's teeth, which contributed to the signing of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Commoner's impact on the masses was observed in 1971 when he wrote 'The Closing Circle,' a book that educated millions of people on the basic principles of ecology. He talked about the risks of pollution in industrialization and called for a complete overhaul of the American economy to conform to the laws of ecology.

His arguments were usually in contrast with those of other well-known environmentalists of his time, including Paul Ehrlich, whom Commoner considered put too much emphasis on population explosion as the cause of environmental problems and not industrial pollution.

Commoner was a very vocal socialist who believed that ecological issues were intertwined with social and economic injustice, an idea that would shape his environmental orientation. Commoner's political career involved a bid for the U.S. presidency in 1980 as a Citizen Party aspirant to tackle environmental, economic, and energy problems through revolution. It did not successfully gain much support for his candidacy, but it introduced ecological issues into the political realm.

Commoner remained active in environmental science and activism until he died in 2012 at 95, and the man was a true embodiment of science in society.