Gaylord Nelson was born in 1916 in Clear Lake, Wisconsin, to a nurse and a country doctor. He earned a law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1942, served in the Army in the Okinawa campaign, and rose to first lieutenant. Joining Wisconsin’s minority Democrats in 1948, he helped bring in remnants of the Progressive Party, and in 1958 became the first Democrat elected governor of Wisconsin since 1932. After two terms he won a U.S. Senate seat in 1962 and served three terms, persuading President John F. Kennedy in 1963 to make a national speaking tour on conservation.

Nelson founded Earth Day on April 22, 1970, borrowing the teach-in model from the antiwar movement and letting local groups organize their own events, drawing about 20 million people. The same year his hearings on the birth control pill led to required patient inserts listing side effects, and during the Clean Air Act debate he proposed phasing out the internal combustion engine. He argued that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. He lost his seat in 1980, became a counselor at the Wilderness Society, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995, and died on July 3, 2005, at 89.

• In 1968 he turned Vince Lombardi’s banquet praise, calling him the nation’s number one conservationist, into a campaign ad, angering Lombardi and his wife Marie.
• A 1975 memo showed Americans spent $34 million in 1974 on the sleep aids Sominex and Compoz, which studies found no better than placebos.
• In 1973 he was one of three senators to oppose Gerald Ford’s nomination as vice president.
• As chair of the Senate Small Business Committee he created Small Business Development Centers and pushed the Regulatory Flexibility Act.
• The Gaylord Nelson Wilderness covers more than 80 percent of the land in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.