Panacea was a Greek goddess with the power to heal wounds and cure sicknesses. Nowadays the word panacea denotes a single solution to a complicated problem. Biology professor Bernd Heinrich views Nature as a panacea to humankind’s problem of surviving happily on this planet. Nature offers models to help understand the causes of diseases, provides chemicals to cure or control them, shows ways to manage our environment, and inspires us.
Bernd Heinrich’s love of Nature began as a child exploring the woods and continued through a PhD from UCLA and a teaching/research career at UC Berkeley and UVM. Heinrich’s research specialties include insect and avian physiology and ecology, but his interests extend to all of Nature, as reflected in the titles of nearly 20 popular books such as: Bumblebee Economics; Ravens in Winter; One Man’s Owl; A Year in the Maine Woods; and Why We Run: A Natural History.