Kirsch S
Pennsylvania State University, USA.
Endeavour. 1999;23(4):155-8. doi: 10.1016/s0160-9327(99)80037-4.
Best known as the first down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, John Wesley Powell built his extraordinary career as geographer, geologist, anthropologist, bureaucrat, and conservationist from his knowledge of the arid region of the American West. Yet as much as Powell's scientific work, and his prescriptions for land reform, were grounded in the western landscape, they were equally situated in the booming Gilded Age capital of Washington, DC, where a new community of government scientists was gelling as part of an increasingly centralized federal state.
约翰·韦斯利·鲍威尔最为人所知的是他第一个顺科罗拉多河而下穿越大峡谷，他凭借对美国西部干旱地区的了解，建立了作为地理学家、地质学家、人类学家、官僚和环保主义者的非凡职业生涯。然而，尽管鲍威尔的科学工作以及他对土地改革的建议都以西部景观为基础，但它们同样也处于蓬勃发展的镀金时代的华盛顿特区，在那里，一个新的政府科学家群体正在逐渐形成，成为日益集权的联邦政府的一部分。
