From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 1-2, March 1998.
Richard Sumner Cowan
Richard S. Cowan was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Although he grew up in Florida he returned to enter Wabash College in 1938 where he married (28 June 1941) Mary Frances Minnick, graduated (1942) and joined the Navy (Seabees). After the war he became a teaching assistant under Harold St. John at the University of Hawaii, taking an M.Sc. in 1948. He then took a job at the New York Botanical Garden that put him on Bassett Maguire’s trips, with John Wurdack, to the Lost World (tepuis) of Venezuela (1950-1951) and began work on neotropical caesalpinioids.
He received a Ph.D. (1952) from Columbia University. In 1957 he accepted a job in the Botany Department, becoming Assistant Director of the Natural History Museum in 1962 and Director from 1965-1972, succeeding T. Dale Stewart and succeeded by Porter M. Kier. He was Secretary of the 1969 International Botanical Congress in Seattle, and was a founder and officer of (1) the Organization Flora Neotropica (his Swartzia was its first monograph in 1968), (2) Association for Tropical Biology, (3) 1st International Congress of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology in 1972, and (4) Flora North America. As senior botanist (1973-1985) he collaborated with Frans Stafleu (died 16 Dec. 1997) on the monumental TL-2 (Taxonomic Literature, ed. 2). He was a charter member and served the International Association for Plant Taxonomy in many capacities Regional Treasurer (1963-1985), Vice President (1975-1981), President (1981-1985). He helped found the Legume Newsletter (Beanbag) and edited it from #1 (1975) through 12 (1980) and was an organizer of the 1st International Legume Conference at Kew (1978).
In late 1985, he retired to East Cannington, Western Australia, and married Roberta Ann (Pobias) Townsend. He died of a stroke but is survived by his second wife, son Michael, his daughter Dierdra Cowan by his first marriage, a brother and a sister. An obituary, with publications, will be in the May TAXON.
[by Dan H. Nicolson]
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