Early Years

Claire LaVerne Schelske was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on April 1, 1932. He was raised in Peabody, Kansas. Claire was both athletic and academic in high school, where he lettered in four sports and graduated class valedictorian in 1950. He graduated with a B.A. in 1955 and an M.S. in 1956 from Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia, Kansas (now known as Emporia State University). During this time, he met and his lifelong partner, Betty, and they were married in 1957. Together they had three children and six grandchildren. Claire first worked with David Chandler at the University of Michigan in 1960, where he completed his Ph.D. research on the availability of iron as a factor limiting primary productivity in a marl lake; this was subsequently published in Science in 1962. From 1960 to 1962, Claire continued his postgraduate work at the University of Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island, where he investigated mechanisms that maintain high productivity in Georgia estuaries with Eugene P. Odum. From 1962 to 1966, he researched the environmental distributions of radioactivity from fallout at the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in Beaufort, North Carolina. He then worked as a technical assistant at the Office of Science and Technology in Washington D.C. until 1967. That same year, Claire was hired at the University of Michigan Great Lakes Research Division, where he initiated what would become a 40-year collaboration with Eugene (Gene) F. Stoermer. Together, they collected baseline environmental data prior to constructing a nuclear power plant along the shoreline. Shortly thereafter, they conducted a series of experiments that spawned their formulation of the “Silica Depletion Hypothesis,” which was published in 1971 in Science. Their research and Claire’s expert testimony played an essential role in requiring the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to reduce storm water overflows of raw sewage into Lake Michigan.