Rutherford Hayes Platt

Rutherford Hayes Platt, Jr. was born on August 11, 1894, in Columbus, Ohio, and died on May 28, 1975, in Boston. He was an American author, photographer, and advertising executive with a focus on nature and the environment.

Platt served as a lieutenant in Battery F of the Three Hundred Twenty-Third Field Artillery during World War I. He co-authored a history of his military unit with McDonald H. Riggs. He completed his undergraduate education at Yale University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1918.

In the early 1920s, Platt worked on the editorial staffs of The World's Work and Doubleday Page & Company. Subsequently, he became a corporate officer at Platt-Forbes, Inc., an advertising agency that represented various food and industrial companies, including Chance Vought Aircraft Corporation. In the mid-1950s, he served as president of Platt Productions Educational Films, which specialized in nature films.

His interest in nature and plant photography developed early; by 1930, Platt had attended classes at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He became known for his photography of fungi, with a notable two-page spread of color photographs published in the "Mushrooms" article of the World Book Encyclopedia. Some of his images were also featured in an article on mushrooms he authored in the August 28, 1944, issue of Life magazine.

Platt participated as a botanist in Arctic expeditions led by Rear Admiral Donald B. MacMillan in 1947 and 1954. During the early 1950s, he served as a biology adviser for Disney's True Life Films and authored "Walt Disney's Secrets of Life," published in 1957.

He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received the John Burroughs Medal in 1945 for his 1942 book titled "This Green World."

Regarding his family background, Rutherford H. Platt, Jr. was a grandson of Fanny Arabella Hayes, a sister of Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th President of the United States. He was widowed from his first wife, Eleanor, at age 42. In 1937, he married his second wife, Jean Dana Noyes. He had a total of five children: two from his first marriage and three from his second. Among his children is Rutherford H. Platt III, who became a professor of geography at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a specialist in land and water resource policy for urban areas.

At the time of his death at age 80, Platt was survived by his wife, several children, nine grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, including Kiran Platt, Camden Feingold, and Ali Feingold.

He was an author of several books on nature and discovery, including:

- "This Green World" (1942)

- "Our Flowering World" (1947)

- "American Trees, A Book of Discovery" (1952)

- "The River of Life" (1956)

- "1001 Questions Answered About Trees" (1959)

- "Wilderness: The Discovery of a Continent of Wonder" (1961)

- "Adventures in the Wilderness" (1963)

- "The Great American Forest" (1965)

- "Discover American Trees" (1968)

- "Water, The Wonder of Life" (1971)

His works are available through public domain audiobooks on LibriVox.