Patrick Horsbrugh dedicated himself to the development of environmental aspects in planning and construction and coined the term Environics. He was a Belfast native, but spent much of his life in the United States. He served in the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy in World War II, adjourning his architectural studies for seven years. After studying in Roma, he reinforced his education as a landscape planner at Harvard. He returned to the United Kingdom, where he carried out urban planning projects, also doing so in Pakistan and India. He moved to the United States in the 1950s and taught architecture at Harvard and in North Carolina and Illinois before moving to the University of Nebraska in 1960. Because of a Nebraska state law limiting foreign nationals from holding state jobs for more than five years, Horsburgh was forced to leave in 1965, going first to the University of Texas and then to Notre Dame, where he lived in South Bend for the rest of his life. He was also active as a painter.