John Peterson Myers, PhD, Founder
Committed to do well by doing good.
John Peterson “Pete” Myers is a founder of Sudoc and serves on the board. As one of the world’s foremost scientific thinkers on challenges related to endocrine disruption chemicals, Pete coined the term “endocrine disruption” and was one of three authors of the seminal, best seller book Our Stolen Future (1996) that alerted the world to the hormone disrupting effects of toxic chemicals. Pete is a guiding force in how Sudoc plans to address the need to replace and eliminate toxic chemicals from our lives and our environment.
Pete is the founder and Chief Scientist of Environmental Health Sciences, a not-for-profit organization that promotes public understanding of advances in scientific research on links between the environment, including climate, and human health. For a dozen years beginning in 1990, Dr. Myers served as Director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is actively involved in primary research on the impacts of endocrine disruption.
Pete serves on a number of boards including those for the Science Communication Network and the Jenifer Altman Foundation. He has also served as board chair of the National Environmental Trust and the H. John Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. He is an Adjunct Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University.
Over the last few years he has received 3 major national and international awards: the first “Champion of Environmental Health Research” award from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (of the 11 awardees in addition to Myers, 3 others were the current and former directors of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences); the Laureate Award for Outstanding Public Service from The Endocrine Society (the world’s largest association of medical and research professionals specializing in endocrinology); and the Distinguished Service Award from the Sierra Club.
Pete lives just outside White Hall, Virginia. As he was growing up he lived near Baltimore and in Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, Uruguay and Paraguay. He holds a doctorate in the biological sciences from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA from Reed College. He is an ornithologist and an accomplished photographer and has been featured in exhibits in Charlottesville, Boston and the San Francisco Bay area. His study of birds and his observation of unnatural behaviors spurred him to explore the effects of toxic chemicals on our environment and our living species. His photography is on display at Calidris Photography.