Russell Wilbur Peterson (October 3, 1916 – February 21, 2011) was an American scientist and politician from Wilmington, Delaware. He served as Governor of Delaware as a member of the Republican Party. An influential environmentalist, he served as chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality and president of the National Audubon Society. The eighth of nine children, his father was an immigrant from Sweden who worked as a bartender and barber. Peterson attended the University of Wisconsin where he received a B.S. in 1938, working as a dishwasher in the chemistry lab to pay the bills and a Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1942. In 1937 he married Lillian Turner, with whom he had four children: R. Glen, Peter J., Kristin P. Havill and Elin. Lillian died in 1994. He married his second wife, June Jenkins, who had been recently widowed, in 1995.
Professional and political career
After graduate school, Peterson was recruited by DuPont to work as a research chemist at its Experimental Station in Wilmington. For over 26 years he held prominent jobs in research, manufacturing and sales, and finally in corporate management, becoming director of research and development in 1963. This act protected Delaware's inland bays and waterways by banning heavy industry from a two-mile-wide strip of Delaware's 115 mile coastline, about 20% of the state. The major consequence of the Act was preventing Shell from building a $200m oil refinery.
Meanwhile, in spite of warnings, Peterson seemed to be unaware of growing financial problems for the state. Finally, in June 1971, Peterson admitted he had made revenue miscalculations resulting in a $5 million deficit. The mistake opened the door to opponents of the other changes to unleash a barrage of criticism. As a result, when he sought a second term the next year, he won the Republican primary by 8% of the vote over former Lieutenant Governor & Governor David P. Buckson. In the general election, he was defeated by Democratic former Lieutenant Governor and then State House minority leader Sherman W. Tribbitt by 7,691 votes after announcing an unexpected tax increase in the middle of the campaign.
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Peterson served as a visiting professor at Dartmouth College in 1985, Carleton College in 1986, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1987. In 1974, Peterson received the Charles Lathrop Parsons Award for public service from the American Chemical Society. In 1982, Russell W. Peterson was honored to be selected as the Swedish-American of the year by the Swedish Council of America (previously the Vasa Order of America). In 1984 he was given the Robert Marshall Award by the Wilderness Society. In 1995, the League of Conservation Voters awarded him its lifetime achievement award.
In April 2008, a small ship was rechristened "Russell W. Peterson." The ship, owned by Aqua Survey Inc. was used for the study of migratory bird routes. However, on May 12, 2008, the "Russell W. Peterson" was destroyed in a storm off the Delaware coast, killing one of its two crew members.
Peterson suffered a stroke on the morning of Monday, February 21, 2011, and died at 8:10pm that evening at home. He was survived by his wife, four children, seventeen grandchildren and sixteen great-grandchildren.