Henry Browne Wallace, the philanthropist who spearheaded the movement to abolish mercury dental fillings, has died in his 89^th year. H.B. was a national treasure -- inventor, entrepreneur, scientific pioneer, visionary on the potential of flora and fauna, and funder of an enormous variety of innovative ideas in science and education.

Mr. Wallace’s Hy-Line chick, based on his cross-breeding, is the ancestral progenitor of three-quarters of all eggs consumed in the country, and now a preponderance for the world. After he retired, he worked relentlessly to promote innovations in basic education, to protect fish and bird species, to address toxicities, and to deal with the sources of human disease.

H.B. Wallace led the way to the threshold we stand at today -- abolition of mercury dental fillings. He funded millions of dollars of primary research into mercury amalgam toxicity, then into the social science and educational bridges necessary to link science with public education, playing an enormous role in the success of this organization, Consumers for Dental Choice.

He was the fourth generation scion of the nationally prominent Wallace family – his father was Vice President of the United States and Secretary of Agriculture, his grandfather also Secretary of Agriculture, and his great-grandfather publisher of a journal serving as the second book, after the Bible, of Midwestern farmers.

His family is asking that donations go to the Wallace Desert Gardens, the largest private collection of desert plants in the world, a creation to study how we can not only protect but also benefit from the diversity of plant life in the dry climates.