1930's Science and Technology | Lilienthal, David E. 1899-1981

NATURAL RESOURCES MANAGER

Rising to the Challenge.

Born in Illinois of Czechoslovakian parents, David Lilienthal graduated from Harvard Law School in 1923, where he had studied with Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at the school. Lilienthal went to work in Chicago for a private law firm. His personal interests centered around issues of conservation and development of natural resources. Following his successful handling of a difficult telephone rate case before the U.S. Supreme Court, he was appointed head of the State Utility Commission of Wisconsin in 1931. Two years later, on the advice of Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter, President Franklin D. Roosevelt invited Lilienthal to join the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

The TVA.

In April 1933 President Roosevelt asked Congress to create an agency to oversee the use, development, and conservation of the Tennessee River Valley. This proposal...