SCIENCE : UCLA Doctor in Biosphere Crew

ORACLE, Ariz. — A 66-year-old UCLA physician, a botanist and a marine biologist were among four men and four women picked today to spend two years inside a 2 1/4-acre sealed dome here intended to be amicrocosm of Earth.

The eight will be the crew of the giant terrarium known as Biosphere II. The privately financed $30-million project aims for a December start.

Biosphere II will resemble a space colony tethered to Earth. It will be a laboratory for solving environmental problems on Biosphere I--the Earth--as well as a prototype for sustaining life outside this world.

The crew members, all single, are Dr. Roy Walford, 66, the only physician, who is a research gerontologist at the UCLA School of Medicine; botanist Linda Leigh, 38; electrical engineer Bernd Zabel, 41, of West Germany; architect Sally Silverstone, 35, of England; marine biologist Abigail K. Alling, 31, of Maine; technician Taber Kyle MacCallum, 26, of New Mexico; agronomist Jane Elizabeth Poynter, 28, of England, and Mark Van Thillo, 36, of Belgium, in charge of construction quality control.