Dr. Dickson Despommier spent thirty-eight years as a professor of microbiology and public health in environmental health sciences at Columbia. He lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
""A book you will read, and then you will read it again. It is a book that could begin a revolution. Let's hope it does."" --Chicago Examiner ""Nobody has ever dreamed as big as Dr. Dickson Despommier."" --New York Magazine ""Despommier has quickly become the central figure in what could be a worldwide revolution."" --Scientific American ""Despommier's . . . ingenious idea . . . could ultimately ease the world's food, water, and energy crises."" --The Huffington Post ""Lucidly written . . . inspiring . . . Vertical farming is no doubt fast emerging as a powerful futuristic concept."" --Businessworld ""A captivating argument that will intrigue general readers and give policymakers and investors much to ponder."" --Kirkus Reviews ""A visionary known the world over, Despommier believes that the 'vertical farm is the keystone enterprise for establishing an urban-based ecosystem' and for 'restoring balance between our lives and the rest of nature."" --Booklist (starred) ""Dickson Despommier is a futurist, an architect, and an intellectual in the same vein as Leonardo da Vinci, I. M. Pei, and Buckminster Fuller. Vertical farms will be remembered as one of the preeminent breakthroughs of the early 21st century, and Despommier will be remembered as the man who brought them to us."" --Josh Tickell, director of Fuel, winner of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary ""This book makes the case that urban agriculture can go vertical as well as horizontal, putting all those expanses of pretty glass to some actual use!"" --Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet ""Cities of the future must generate their own food supply. Dickson Despommier's elegant, simple answer for achieving this goal is vertical farming. Welcome to the third green revolution."" --Peter Diamandis, Chairman of the X Prize Foundation and Co-Founder of the Singularity University