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In attempting to define R. Buckminster Fuller, it's easy to come up with sets of presumed opposites he somehow transcended. He was a passionate intellectual, a practical visionary, and an individualist whose only concern was the good of all humanity. Moreover, he was a master of grasping overarching theories while also teasing out their practical applications.
Fuller was born in 1895 in Milton, Mass. After being expelled twice from Harvard University, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War I. He was working as National Accounts Sales Manager for the Kelley-Springfield Truck Company when his first daughter died just short of her fourth birthday. Fuller, 32, fell into a deep depression, out of which came a commitment to a different and more meaningful life, in which he would attempt to solve practical problems and alleviate human suffering.
His most celebrated creation is the geodesic dome, one famous example of which was built for the 1967 World's Fair in Montreal. In a 1964 profile of Fuller, Time magazine described the dome this way: "Structurally unlimited as to size, cheap to make, requiring no obstructing columns for support, the geodesic dome uses less structural material to cover more space than any other building ever devised. Unlike classic domes, Fuller's depends on no heavy vaults or flying buttresses to support it. It is self-sufficient as a butterfly's wing, and as strong as an eggshell."
An early ecologist, Fuller created a remarkable map of the world that suggests all the continents are in fact a single island floating in a single ocean. He also coined the term "Spaceship Earth." According to his longtime collaborator E.J. Applewhite, Fuller used it "to convince all his fellow passengers that they would have to work together as the crew of a ship. His was an earnest, even compulsive program to convince his listeners that humans had a function in the universe. Humans have a destiny to serve as ‘local problem solvers,' converting their experience to the highest advantage of others."
Applewhite thought of Fuller as a descendent of the New England Transcendentalists such as Emerson and Thoreau. Jacobs agrees. "He felt that people had to look into their own hearts and minds and find what they were called to do," Jacobs noted. "That's a very American spiritual idea."
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