Nov
19

November 19, 1987

In 1989, Anson Hines (right) of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) showed retired Maryland Sen. Charles McC. Mathias (1922-2010) a research resource for Chesapeake blue crabs, part of the newly opened SERC laboratory named for the senator, an early environmental champion.

Ground is broken for the new Smithsonian Environmental Research Center laboratory in Edgewater, Maryland. The building, to be named the Charles McC. Mathias, Jr., Laboratory, is scheduled for completion in the fall of 1988. The Center is named in honor of Mathias, former United States Senator from Maryland, because of his many years of championing legislation to protect the Chesapeake Bay from overdevelopment and pollution.

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Posted: 19 November 2010
About the Author:

Alex di Giovanni is primarily responsible for "other duties as assigned" in the Office of Communications and External Affairs. She has been with the Smithsonian since 2006 and plans to be interred in the Smithson crypt.