Dickson Despommier

Dickson D. Despommier (1940–2025) was emeritus professor of public health and microbiology at Columbia University. His previous books include The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the Twenty-First Century (2010), which popularized the idea of raising crops inside tall buildings; People, Parasites, and Plowshares: Learning from Our Body’s Most Terrifying Invaders (Columbia, 2013); and Parasitic Diseases (seventh edition, 2019).