John Polk Allen (born May 6, 1929, Carnegie, Oklahoma)[1] is a systems ecologist, engineer, metallurgist, adventurer, and writer.[2] Allen is a proponent of the science of biospherics and a pioneer in sustainable co-evolutionary development. He is the founder of Synergia Ranch, and is best known as the inventor and director of research of Biosphere 2, the world's largest vivarium and research facility to study global ecology.[3] Biosphere 2 set multiple records in closed ecological systems work, including degree of sealing tightness, 100% waste and water recycle, and duration of human residence within a closed system (eight people for two years). He is also involved with forestry and reforestation in Puerto Rico where he owns a 1000 acre Mahogany tree farm at Patillas.[4]
Allen was co-producer and dramaturge of Theater of All Possibilities, an internationally touring theater company, and has over two dozen publications to his credit (many under his nom de plume, Johnny Dolphin): half scientific, the remainder in poetry, plays, essays, short stories, novels, and autobiographical fiction. He currently serves as chairman of the Institute of Ecotechnics, an international project development and management company.
A fellow of the Linnean Society, the Royal Geographical Society, and the Explorer's Club, Allen has led multiple ecological expeditions, with a focus on the ecology of early civilizations, in Nigeria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tibet, Turkey, India, and the Altiplano. He has been called a "swashbuckling frontiersman" and an "eccentric mix of scientist, artist, entrepreneur, and adventurer" by author David Jay Brown in the book Voices from the Edge (1995).[5]
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