Children:
Living Son
Living Son
Living Daughter
Sibling(s):
Joseph Carleston Illick
Dorothy Evelyn Illick
Joseph Francis Illick
Anna May Illick
Ira Elwood Illick |
Notes:
Natural Resources News for Alumni ... from the Chairman Department of Natural Resources College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
Cornell University Summer 2001
Helen Illick Breed
Helen Illick Breed (Ph.D. ’53) died January 4, 2001, at Troy, NY, following a brief illness. She was 75. Her career spanned 50 years of scientific research, environmental advocacy, and education.
Helen Illick was born in 1925 in New Cumberland, PA. When awarded her degree from Cornell in 1953, she became one of the first three women in the United States to earn a doctorate in ichthyology. Her chairman was the ichthyologist Edward C. Raney, one of the department’s four distinguished vertebrate zoologists.
While a master’s degree candidate at Syracuse University in 1948–49, she conducted research in
endocrinology on the effects of desoxycorticosterone acetate on salt and water metabolism. This research led to treatment for Addison’s Disease, bringing help to many of its sufferers, including President Kennedy. She had graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse with majors in premedical studies, zoology, chemistry, and science education. By the time she turned 30, she was already listed in Who’s Who 16 of American Men in Science—long before that work was retitled to include women.
As an educator—at Cornell University, the Oceanographic Institute at Woods Hole, Vassar College, Russell Sage College, and the University of Akron, as well as at institutions abroad—she helped many students prepare for careers in fields from medicine to marine biology.
As a Ford Foundation fellow at Vassar College, she developed curricula in physiology and endocrinology. The National Wildlife Federation awarded her a fellowship while she was a doctoral candidate at Cornell University. A fellowship from the National Institute of Health permitted her to investigate the effects of nutrition, growth, cancer, and osteoporosis on bone structure in fish.
When she was assistant director at the National Science Foundation in the 1950s, the first grant
proposal that she guided through to acceptance helped fund the initial research of another young
woman environmentalist, Jane Goodall. Throughout her life Breed took great pride and pleasure in
having started Goodall in her work.
Breed was active in international circles. As a fellow of the American Scandinavian Association,
she directed an international team that produced a range of paper chromatography studies of fish
species in Norway. After her return to the United States, she continued this work as laboratory director
at Cornell and at Woods Hole. As a Fulbright fellow at the Instituto del Mar in Peru in 1972–73, she
directed and published a controversial study on the economic and ecological effects of commercial
overfishing; major changes in both industry and government policy were the result.
Beginning in the 1970s, Breed became increasingly involved in environmental advocacy. Serving on county, state, regional, national, and international councils and commissions, she was instrumental in creating environmental study areas and centers for secondary students. She advocated planning and districting to protect environmental sites and resources as well as agrarian lifestyles.
Working with former New York Senator Bella Abzug, as part of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization, she was involved in the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. She then worked to implement Agenda 21 in New York State, and she represented the state in national forums that developed local and national standards to support the new international norms. A breast cancer survivor, she was involved at the time of her death in a study on breast cancer and
environmental risk factors in New York State, at Cornell. She had remained a loyal Cornell alumna,
manifesting keen interest in our department and high enthusiasm for our programs.
Breed is survived by her husband, Henry Breed II, and their children: ***** of New York City,
***** (’84, Engineering) of Tokyo, and ***** (’88, Human Ecology) of
Washington, D.C. |
