People at Laucks Foundation

Mary Laucks
President and Treasurer Mary is responsible for all LF operations and has been a member of LF board of directors since 1974. Mary has degrees in physics and atmospheric chemistry. Her research included the influence of atmospheric aerosol on climate, the microphysics of pollen particles and sea ice bacteria, and free electron lasers. From 1999-2009 she was on the board of the Land Institute, an organization seeking to develop perennial grain crops for human consumption. She completed a certificate program in painting in 2010 and is now a practicing artist. She currently lives on Salt Spring Island, BC where she and her husband own a farm and she markets fruit, vegetables and apple juice. Mary Laucks' research papers can be found here
Brian Swanson
Vice President and Director of Research Brian has headed the Laucks Foundation Research Lab since 2007, where he continues his research on the influence of atmospheric ice particles on the earth's climate. From 1997 to 2004, Brian was a research professor at the University of Washington Earth and Space Sciences Department; he is now emeritus. His graduate and undergraduate degrees were in physics, mathematics and philosophy. Brian currently lives on Salt Spring Island, BC where he and his wife own a fruit and vegetable farm. Brian Swanson's research papers can be found here
Dwight Gee
Secretary Dwight has 25-plus years of domestic experience and one decade of international experience in organizational development, communications, strategic planning, fundraising, and board and volunteer training. Dwight stepped down from his most recent position as executive vice president of the World Justice Project to pursue volunteer and personal activities. Prior to that position, he was executive vice president at Seattle-based ArtsFund, where he served in executive positions for 22 years. He is a long-time member and chair of the advisory committee of Seattle University's Masters in Nonprofit Leadership Program. He also served two terms as board president of FareStart, a Seattle-based NGO training homeless people to serve in the food service industry. In 2002, as a consultant to the George Soros Open Society Foundation, he helped establish an arts council in Mongolia. As a volunteer, he helped create and currently serves as president of a US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit to support Mongolian culture. Dwight also serves on the board of the Laucks Foundation. He is a guest lecturer at Seattle University and the University of Washington on fundraising and nonprofit management, and also provides training sessions to boards of many nongovernmental organizations on fundraising, governance, and nonprofit management and leadership. Dwight lives in Seattle.
Collaborators Jon Nelson Allan Bertram Marcia Baker
Irving Laucks
Original founder Irving Laucks was born in 1882, in Akron, Ohio. In 1906, after leaving Cleveland's Case Institute of Technology with B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemistry, he traveled west to Seattle, where in 1908 he established an assay office and chemical laboratory. From this beginning research and business, he developed major patents in coal distillation, soybean adhesives for plywood, paints and primers, and various other processes and machinery used in the manufacture of plywood. He authored a book on commercial oils in 1919. In 1955, he was named a "father" of the plywood industry by the American Plywood Association for his developmental discoveries leading to the manufacture of cheap water-resistant plywood. In 1942, he retired from an active manufacturing and laboratory business to devote himself to private chemical research having to do with the synthesis of proteins and the development of blood plasma substitutes. He published A Speculation In Reality in 1943. The shock of the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima impelled Irving to turn all thought and effort toward endeavoring to alert people to the perils inherent in the development of nuclear weaponry. In the intervening years since that time, until a few months before his death in 1981, he worked tirelessly on behalf of world peace. As a scientist as well as a humanitarian - through widely disseminated pamphlets, speeches and letters to the editor - he unceasingly advocated world nuclear disarmament. His strong support of nonviolent peace movements led him in 1964 to Santa Barbara where he became a consultant on war and peace at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and in 1969 he established the Laucks Foundation.
Eulah Laucks
Original Founder Eulah was born in Gold Hill, NV in 1909 and grew up in Bakersfield, CA. She graduated from Bakersfield high school, and later worked at the Kern County Tuberculosis Sanitarium in Keene, California to save enough money to attend the University of Washington in Seattle, where she majored in journalism. She spent her senior year in Rome and witnessed the progression of Mussolini's Italy towards an alliance with Hitler and the beginning of WWII. When she returned to the US she took a job as a public relations writer at Laucks Laboratories in Seattle, WA where she met and married Irving Laucks. After living on Orcas Island WA for ten years they moved to Healdsberg, CA and had a daughter, Mary Laucks and raised a foster son, the late Lorenzo Gon. They traveled abroad for several years and then moved to Santa Barbara in 1964 to begin an association with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, where Eulah served on the board of directors for many years. Eulah and Irving founded the Laucks Foundation (LF) in 1969 and focused its activities on raising awareness of the danger of the MAD relationship between the Soviet Union and the US. When Irving Laucks died in 1981, Eulah began to focus LF on ecological issues and social justice. At the age of 69 Eulah received a PhD from UCSB with a thesis titled, The Meaning of Children in Contemporary America. For many years Eulah contributed her time and energy to the UCSB Scholarship committee, The Channel City Women's Forum, The Community Environmental Council, Santa Barbara City College, Fairview Gardens, The Walter Capps Center, The Land Institute, and to publishing the Laucks Foundation newsletter Reprint Mailings 1979-1999 . In 1996 she published a memoir, Saucer Eyes, about growing up in Nevada's hard rock mining country. She lived with her daughter and son-in-law, Brian Swanson from 2000 until her death, a few months before her 99th birthday, in 2008.