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John M. Nelson was born on October 14, 1935 in Highland Park, Michigan. He left home when he was 18 years old to crew on the sailing ship Brigantine Yankee from 1953-1955. The Brigantine Yankee was owned by Irving and Exy Johnson and circumnavigated the globe four times with amateur crews from 1946-1958.

While in the Galapagos Islands, John Nelson and the other 18 crew members of the Brigantine Yankee harpooned a young sperm whale and caught green sea turtles to provide sustenance for their voyage. Several months later, on Pentecost Island in the New Hebrides, he and his shipmates became the first outsiders to witness and film land diving, from which bungee jumping originated. These photos and films were published in the National Geographic Magazine and Film Series. The next month, while in the Highlands of New Guinea, he hiked for seven days from Goroka to Mt. Hagen, paying his porters 1 tsp of salt per day. Almost a year later, after spending much time in Africa, he considered leaving the ship and emigrating to South Africa, but didn't because of the Apartheid Regime.

In 1960, he married his wife Mary Ellen (Richland, WA) and had two sons, David and Ethan. In 1969, he earned a PhD from the University of Michigan and spent the next three years, working with chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys at the Biomedical Primate Research Center (BPRC) in Rijswijk, the Netherlands. While living in Europe he built a camper in a Volkswagen van and, spent three summers travelling with his family from Norway, Finland and Russia in the north to Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy in the south. Returning to America, he became a professor at the University of Rochester in 1972. In 1976, he joined Battelle, in Richland, Washington from which he retired in 1995. Nelson died in Richland, Washington on April 10, 2019.