Holmes Rolston III (1932–) is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is the founder of the journal Environmental Ethics and has been active in establishing, shaping, and defining the modern discipline of environmental philosophy. Rolston was born in Rockbridge Baths, Virginia, and studied at Davidson College (physics and mathematics), Union Seminary (he is a Presbyterian minister, as were his father and grandfather before him), and the University of Pittsburgh (philosophy) before earning his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. Rolston has published a number of seminal books in environmental philosophy including Philosophy Gone Wild, Environmental Ethics, and Conserving Natural Value.

Rolston has sought an expansion of a philosophical understanding of the natural world. He argues that the natural world carries intrinsic values, ...