Johnny Dolphin
is the nom de plume of John Allen - explorer, author,
poet, playwright, scientist, - in 1963 he gave up his New
York international project
development career to make a two year journey around the
world living with the legendary avant-garde and Berber scene
in Tangiers, Morocco, then continued dressed as an Arab hiking
and hitch-hiking across N. Africa to the Pyramids and Karnak
to study the origins of civilization. Deciding to move toward
the tribal areas and explore the area of the origins of humanity,
he traveled up the Nile, with tribal chiefs and shaman from
the South Sudan to Lake Victoria, then journeyed on through
Uganda, Kenya, to the sacred Zambezi, then returned north
to stay in Swahili Mombasa before taking third class passage
with refugees to the Rann of Kutch. From there he wandered
through the physical and metaphysical realms of Hindu Karma
yogins and Tibetan Lamas. Then he encountered America again
working as a stringer to a foreign correspondent and in a
hospital on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Though he had published
some poetry before, he emerged as an accomplished author
with the first book of his authoritative Novel of the Sixties, "Thirty-Nine
Blows on a Gone Trumpet". Since then, he has chronicled
a personal and social history of the essence of the places
he has been through novels, poetry, short stories and plays.
John Allen,
inventor and co-founder of the Biosphere 2 project - the world’s
largest laboratory for global ecology. Biosphere 2 set a number
of world records in closed life system work including, among
others, degree of sealing tightness, 100% waste recycle and
water recycle, and duration of human residence within a closed
system
(8 people for two years -- see www.biospherics.org ).
Allen began the first manned Biosphere Test Module experiment
in September, 1988, residing in the almost fully recyclable closed
ecological system environment for three days and setting a world
record at that time.
As the Executive Chairman that
started up the project and then as Director of Biospheric Research,
Development and Engineering for the project, Allen led the world
class science and engineering teams that created Biosphere 2's
materially closed life system, as well as the development of
spin-off technologies. He currently serves as the Chairman of
Global Ecotechnics Corporation, an international project development
and management company with a Biospheres Division engaged in
designing and preparing to build the second generation of advanced
materially closed biospheric systems and ecologically enriched
biomic systems (www.biospheretechnologies.com)
and its EcoFrontiers Division which owns and operates ecological
projects of which he was the chief designer in France, Australia,
Puerto Rico and England (www.ecotechnics.edu).
Allen is also co-founder (with
Abigail Alling) and Chairman of Biosphere Foundation, a 501 c
(3) non-profit corporation devoted to mapping and monitoring
the health and vitality of coral reefs, and the exploring the
origins of human cultures aboard the Heraclitus, a research vessel
that has sailed over 200,000 nautical miles around the world
(www.pcrf.org).
In
the early sixties, John Allen worked on regional development
projects
with David Lillienthal’s
Development Resources Corporation in the U.S., Iran, and
Ivory Coast. Before that he headed a special metals team
at Allegheny-Ludium
Steel Corporation which developed over thirty alloys to product
status. He has led expeditions studying ecology, particularly
the ecology and early civilizations located in present day
Nigeria, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Nepal,
Tibet, Turkey,
India, Mexico and the Altiplano.
Dolphin
has over two dozen publications to his credit, about half of
them scientific, under the name
John Allen, the rest in poetry, drama, prose, and film. A Fellow
of the Linnean Society, Explorer’s Club, Royal Geographic
Society, and the World Academy of Art and Science, Allen holds
a degree in Metallurgical-Mining Engineering with honors from
the Colorado School of Mines, an MBA with High Distinction from
the Harvard Business School where he studied as a Baker Scholar,
and holds an Engineering Physiology Certificate from the University
of Michigan. Before engineering, he studied anthropology, classics,
writing, and history at Northwestern, Stanford, and Oklahoma
universities and served in the U.S. Army’s Engineering
Corps. as a machinist. He was also a Union organizer on the south
side of Chicago in 1951-52 where Paul Robeson and W.E.B.Dubois
mentored him.
As Johnny
Dolphin he has read his poetry and prose in many places around
the world including
George Whitman’s Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, the Green
Street Cafe in New York where Ornette Coleman accompanied him
on the saxophone, The October Gallery in London, (accompanied
on occasion by poets such as Ira Cohen, Sebastian Barker, Jack
Hirschman, Pops Mohammed, Jegede, and Aidan Dunn),. and the Caravan
of Dreams in Fort Worth, Texas. His plays have been performed
in many countries on seven continents, from the ICA in London
and Theatre du Soleil in Paris, to villages on the Amazon and
streets in California, from Wroclaw to Oshogbo. As an acting
teacher, he has taught over 200 actors and set up ten studios.
He performs several times a year with musicians and dancers as
Johnny & The Dolphins. He will be reading at City Lights
in San Francisco this July 2005.
John is an accomplished speaker
on Biospheric Science and Co-Evolutionary Comprehensive Project
Design. He has spoken at a variety of international forums on
the emerging science of biospherics, the implications of Biosphere
2 for health, environment, science, and culture, and the key
role of space biospheres in the future, and the place and role
of humanity in the biosphere.
Biosphere 2
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NOVELS
Joe Madison: A trilogy of " a
poet's odyssey through the heart of the action"
Dolphin, Johnny, Liberated Space, Synergetic Press
2000. (#3)
Dolphin, Johnny, Journey Around An Extraordinary Planet,
Synergetic Press, London/Tucson 1990. (#2)
Dolphin, Johnny, Thirty-nine Blows on a Gone Trumpet,
Synergetic Press, London/Tucson, 1987. (#1)
SHORT
STORIES
Dolphin,
Johnny, My Many
Kisses, Synergetic
Press 1998.
POETRY
Dolphin,
Johnny, Off
the Road, Synergetic
Press 1998. (New poetry)
Dolphin, Johnny. Wild, Synergetic
Press, Tucson, September 1992. (Collected Poems and Short Stories)
Dolphin, Johnny. The
Dream and Drink of Freedom. Synergetic
Press, London/Tucson, 1988. (Collected Poems)
Dolphin, Johnny. Author
and narrator, The Dream and
Drink of Freedom, The Talking
Poets Series, Caravan of Dreams Productions, Fort Worth, 1989. (Audio Tape)
DRAMA
Some in collaboration with Kathelin Hoffman
Gray and others:
"Tamarand", "Faust" (adaptation), "McNeckels
Folly", "Marouf the Cobbler’, “Gilgamesh" (adaptation), "The
Tin Can Man", "The Guru", "Oedipus
at Colonus" (adaptation), "Life
is a Dream" (adaptation), "Metal
Woman", "Billy the Kid", "Cyberspace
I", "Cyberspace II", "Milarepa" (adaptation),
and "Deconstruction of the Countdown",
a play adapted with William Burrough’s approval from
his writings. Some of these plays were published in The
Collected Works of the Caravan of Dreams Theater Volumes I
and 11, Synergetic Press, London/Tucson, 1983/84. "Deconstruction
of the Countdown: A Space Age Mythology" was
published in abridged form in Poetry London Apple Magazine,
No. 2, Editor: Tambimuttu, Editions Poetry London, London,
1982.
What
writer Terry Wilson has to say about Johnny Dolphin
NON-FICTION
WORKS
Allen, John, Biosphere 2: The Human Experiment. Viking/Penguin Books, 1991.
Allen, John. Succeed: Structuring Managerial Thought, Synergetic Press, Tucson,
1988.
Allen, J.P. and Nelson, Mark: Space Biospheres. Synergetic Press, 90p., softcover,
London/Tucson, 1986; revised second edition, 1989. Orbit Publications, 90 p.,
hardcover. 1987. Russian translation by Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1991.
FILM/MULTIMEDIA
PROJECTS
1993 Conceptual and visual design consultant for multi-media CD-ROM Biosphere
2.- Life, Earth, Space and Technology by IBM’s Multi-Media Publishing
group with Paul Evans and Francesca Scalpi.
1987 Creative consultant, prize-winning film Omette: Made in America, based
on the life of jazz musician Ornette Coleman, Caravan of Dreams Productions,
Fort Worth.
1987 Documentary film producer and narrator, Joumeys to Other Worlds, a series
of eleven cultural documentary films, Caravan of Dreams Productions in cooperation
with Zagreb Television, Yugoslavia
1986 Documentary film producer, prize-winning film, Dark Planet, Caravan of
Dreams Productions in cooperation with Zagreb Television, Yugoslavia.
SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS,
PAPERS, AND PRESENTATIONS
M. Nelson, W. F. Dempster, S.
Silverstone, A. Alling, J.P. Allen, M. van Thillo. January 2005. "Crop
yield and light/energy efficiency in a closed ecological system:
Laboratory Biosphere experiments with wheat and sweet potato."
Morowitz, H.*, Allen, J.**,
Nelson, M.**, Alling, A.**, and Corliss, J.** 1993. "Closure
as a Scientific Concept and its Application to Ecosystem Ecology
and the Science of the Biosphere", *George Mason University,
** Space Biospheres Ventures (in review, Adv. Space Research,
presented at COSPAR 2004).
Allen, J.P. 2003 “Ethnospherics:
Origin of Human Cultures, Their Subjugation by the Technosphere,
The Beginning of an Ethnosphere, and Steps Needed to Complete
the Ethnosphere.” Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics
(ESEP)
http://www.esep.de/articles/esep/2003/E29.pdf
Allen, J.P., M. Nelson, and
A. Alling. 2003. “The legacy of Biosphere 2 for the study
of Biospherics and Closed Ecological Systems.” COSPAR.
(in press). F4.1-0002-02
Allen, J.and Alling, A. 2002.
The design Approach for Mars on Earth™, A Biospheric Closed
System Testing Facility for Long-term Space Habitation.” American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. IAA.8.2.02
Allen, J. 2002. “People Challenges in Biospheric Systems for Long-Term
Habitation in Remote Areas, Space Stations, Moon, and Mars Expeditions.” Life
Support and Biosphere Science, Vo. 8 (in press). Cognizant Communications.
Allen, J., “Artificial Biospheres as a Model for Global Ecology,” Life
Support and Biosphere Science, forthcoming June 2001.
Allen, J., Oct. 2000. “The
Evolution of the New Disciplines of Closed Ecological Systems
and Biospherics,” paper presented at Institute of Ecotechnics
Conference, France.
Allen, J. September. 2000. “Problems
and Challenges of Closed Ecological Systems,” paper presented
at NASA Ames and Global Ecotechnics Corp Workshop on Ecosynthesis:
Creating Open and Closed Ecosystems on Mars, Synergia Ranch,
Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Allen, J. 2000. “A Review
of Humanity’s Taxonomic Classification,” (in review).
Allen, J. 2000. “Artificial
Biospheres as a Model for Global Ecology on Planet Earth,” Life
Support and Biosphere Science, Vol. 7, No. 3.
Nelson, M, Alling, A., Dempster,
W.F., Van Thillo, M., Allen, John, June 2000. “Integration
of Wetland Wastewater Treatment with Space Life Suport Systems:
Mars Base Prototype,: paper presented at COSPAR, forthcoming
publication Advances in Space Research, Pergamon.
Nelson, M, Alling, A, Allen,
J., June 2000. “Developing and Testing a Soil Based Bioregenerative
Agriculture System to Feed a Four Person Crew at a Mars Base,” paper
presented at COSPAR, forthcoming publication in Advances in Space
Research, Pergamon.
Allen, J. 1999. “Biospherics
and Biosphere 2, Mission One (1991-1993),” Ecological Engineering
13.
Allen, J. 1997. “Biospheric
Theory and Report on Overall Biosphere 2 Design and Performance
During Mission One (1991-1993)” Life Support and Biosphere
Science, Vol. 4, No. 3/4.
Allen, J. 1998. “Biospheric
Ecology,” paper presented in October at Institute of Ecotechnics
conference, France.
Allen, J. 1997. "Reclassification
of the Human Species as properly belonging to a separate Kingdom,
Symbolia, and not to the primate order of the Animal Kingdom." Talk
given at October 25, Conference on Biospheres, Evolution, and
Cultures, Les Marroniers, Aix-en-Provence, France.
Allen, J. 1997. Keynote speech "Applying
Lessons learned from Biosphere 2 to Biosphere 1, Earth" presented
at Tropical Seas Satellite Mission for Biospheric Studies of
Coral Reefs, Santa Monica, California, January 10, 1997.
Allen, J. 1996. Biosphere 2. Presented at the Fifth International Aerospace
Symposium, Nagoya, Japan, December 3, 1996 and published in the Proceedings.
Allen, J. 1996. Biosphere 2's
Place in the History of Science. Presented at the Natural History
Museum, Vienna, Austria, October 30, 1996.
Allen, J.P.; Nelson, M.; Burgess,
T. L.; Abigail; A; Alvarez-Romo, N.; Dempster, W.F.; Walford,
R.; "Initial Results from Biosphere A Closed Ecological
System Laboratory," Bioscience, April 1993.
"The Environment and Health
in Closed Ecological Life Systems", presentation at The
Environment and Health Connection Conference, sponsored by the
American Environmental Health Foundation, Dallas, Texas, February
27, 1993.
"The Mission of Life",
paper presented at Forest '92 conference in Rio de Janeiro, May,
1992 representing Space Biospheres Ventures. Outlining conceptual
design contributions of Biosphere 2 to Biosphere 1.
MacCallum, T.; Nelson, M.; Allen,
J.P.; Leigh, L.S.; Alling, A.; Alvarez-Romo, N.: "The Biosphere
2 Project and its Application for Space Exploration and Mars
Settlement." The Case for Mars IV, Volume 76, Science and
Technology Series, American Astronautical Society, San Diego,
1992.
Nelson, M.; Leigh, L.; Alling,
A.; MacCallum, T.; Allen, J. ; Alvarez-Romo, N.; "Biosphere
2 Test Module: A Ground-Based Sunlight-Driven Prototype of a
Closed Ecological System". Paper #MF 11.2.6, COSPAR XXVIII
Plenary Meeting, The Hague, Netherlands, Published V. 12, n.
5, Natural and Artificial Ecosystems, Life Sciences and Space
Research XXIV 4 (1991) p. 151.
Nelson, M.; Allen, J.P.; Dempster,
W.F.: "Biosphere 2: Prototype Project for a Permanent and
Evolving Life System for a Mars Base". Paper # MF 1.4.6,
COSPAR XXVIII Plenary Meeting, The Hague, Netherlands, 1991;
published in: Advances in Space Research, V. 12, n. 5, Natural
and Artificial Ecosystems, Life Sciences and Space Research XXIV
4 (1991) p. 211.
Allen, J.P.: An Historical Overview
of the Biosphere 2 Project. Workshop on Biological Life Support
Technologies: Commercial Opportunities, Mark Nelson and Gerald
Soffen (ed.), NASA Conference Publication, NASA Office of Management,
Scientific and Technical Information Division, Washington D.C.,
1990. Also published in Biological Life Support Systems, Proceedings
of the Workshop on Biological Life Support Technologies: Commercial
Opportunities, Mark Nelson and Gerald Soffen (ed.), Synergetic
Press, Tucson, 1990.
Allen, J.P.: "Biosphere
2 and the Concept of the Noosphere". Paper delivered at
the Second International Review of the History, Current Work
and Future of Closed Ecological Systems conference, co-sponsored
by the Institute of Biophysics (USSR), Space Biospheres Ventures
and the Institute of Ecotechnics, held in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia,
1989.
Allen, J.P. and Nelson, Mark:
Space Biospheres. Synergetic Press, 90p., softcover, London/Tucson.
1986; revised second edition, 1989. Orbit Publications, 90 p.,
hardcover. 1987. Russian translation by Progress Publishers,
Moscow, 1991
Nelson, M. and Allen, J.P.: "Ecology
and Space". Paper published in the Japanese Society for
Biological Sciences in Space publication series, Vol. 3, No.
1, Tokyo, 1989, and reprinted in Lunar Habitation Vol. 1, by
Japan Macro-Engineer Society and Lunar Habitation Institute,
Tokyo, 1989.
Allen, J.P.: "The Scientific
Legacy of V.I. Vernadsky". Paper delivered at Vernadsky
Memorial Symposium, Kiev. March, 1988.
Allen, J.P.: "Geological,
Hydrosphere and Atmosphere Data Needed to Plan Long-term Life
Systems for Mars Habitation". Paper delivered at Brown University
and Vernadsky Institute Micro-Symposium, Providence, RI March,
1988.
Allen, J.P.: "Modeling
of Complex Ecological Systems". Paper delivered at the "International
Review of the History, Current Work and Future of Closed Ecological
Systems" conference arranged by Keith Runcorn, FRS, and
the Institute of Ecotechnics and held at the Royal Society, London,
July, 1987.
Allen, J.P.; Leigh, L.; Alling,
A.; and MacCallum, T. "Man in Closed Ecological System" (unpublished)
John
Dolphin Allen is represented by :

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