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Russ was born on March 27, 1943, in Watertown, New York. He was raised in the northern New York area, where he developed an early interest in natural history. He received a BS degree from St. Bonaventure University, and MS and PhD degrees from the University of Kansas, where he studied under the renowned vertebrate ecologist Henry S. Fitch. His graduate research focused on ecology and demography of lizard populations. After nine years as assistant and associate professor of Biology at Mansfield State College in Pennsylvania, he moved into government service in 1977. While in Pennsylvania he conducted research on local salamander populations. As a research biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, he instituted one of the earliest programs of research investigating the effects of environmental contaminants on amphibians and reptiles. Shifting his emphasis to management, he served as assistant director and branch chief at Patuxent until 1989, when he moved to the Fish and Wildlife Service headquarters offices in Washington, D.C. He served for a total of eight years in headquarters offices as the research organization of the Fish and Wildlife Service became successively units of the National Biological Service and the U.S. Geological Survey. In 1997, he became director of the U.S. Geological Survey Florida Caribbean Science Center in Gainesville, Florida. Russ retired in 2006. He continues his writing, some of which is based on his Patuxent experiences. Russ was elected to the Washington Biologists’ Field Club in 1990.