From Plant Press, Vol. 4, No. 2 from April 2001.
José Cuatrecasas was a pioneering botanist and taxonomist who spent nearly a half-century working in the Department of Botany at the Smithsonian Institution. His research, especially in the flowering plant family Asteraceae, was devoted to the classification, biogeography, exploration, and ecology of plants of the paramo and subparamo regions of Andean South America. Out of enduring respect and admiration, the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) has established the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany. This medal is presented annually to a botanist and scholar of international stature who has contributed significantly to advancing the field of tropical botany. The award will serve to keep vibrant the accomplishments and memory of this outstanding scientist.
The recipient of the Cuatrecasas Medal is selected by a committee made up of staff botanists at NMNH, in consultation with other local plant scientists in the Washington area. This year the committee was composed of Larry Dorr (Chair), Pedro Acevedo, Alan Wittemore, and Pat Herendeen. Nominations for the medal are accepted from all scientists in Botany at NMNH. The award consists of a bronze medal bearing an image of Cuatrecasas on the front with the recipient’s name and date of presentation on the back.
In reviewing nominations for the inaugural recipient of the medal, the selection committee was confronted by a long list of candidates. However, one esteemed botanist quickly rose to the top of the list: Rogers McVaugh.
McVaugh has made many important contributions to tropical botany over his long and distinguished career. He was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1909 and was trained at Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania earning his Ph.D. there in 1935. He has taught at the Universities of Georgia and Michigan as well as worked as a botanist for the Division of Plant Exploration and Introduction at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He is currently enjoying an active and full retirement in the herbarium at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has received both the Asa Gray Award from the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and the Henry Allan Gleason Award from the New York Botanical Garden.
With over 200 publications in botany, his breadth of taxonomic expertise is enviable. Although his publications on temperate zone taxa are extensive, McVaugh is being honoured for his work in the tropics. His monographic work in the Lobeliaceae and the taxonomically-difficult Myrtaceae, his contributions to various tropical floras in Panama, Guatemala, and the Guyana Highlands and particularly his ambitious and highly-regarded floristic work in Mexico, especially the Flora Novo-Galiciana, the exhaustive untangling of the taxonomic muddle created by the Sessé and Mociño Expedition to Mexico from 1787-1803, and biographies of various botanists, are among the many contributions that led the committee to the inescapable conclusion that McVaugh is the scientist most deserving of being the inaugural recipient of the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany.
McVaugh is considered the taxonomists’ taxonomist and is applauded for the inspiration that he has provided all botanists in the exploration for tropical plants around the world.
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